Genetic identification of human remains from the Korean War

The genetic identification of skeletal remains from Chinese People's Volunteers (CPVs) of the Korean War has been challenging because of the degraded DNA samples and the lack of living close relatives. This study established a workflow for identifying CPVs by combining Y-chromosome short tandem repeats (Y-STRs), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) hypervariable regions I and II, autosomal STRs (aSTRs), and identity-informative SNPs (iiSNPs). A total of 20 skeletal remains of CPVs and 46 samples from their alleged relatives were collected. The success rate of DNA extraction from human remains was 100%. Based on Y-STRs, six remains shared the same male lineages with their alleged relatives. Meanwhile, mtDNA genotyping supports two remains sharing the same maternal lineages with their alleged relatives. Likelihood ratios (LRs) were further obtained from 27 aSTRs and 94 iiSNPs or 1936 iiSNPs to confirm their relationship. All joint pedigree LRs were >100. Finally, six remains were successfully identified. This pilot study for the systematic genetic identification of CPVs from the Korean War can be applied for the large-scale identification of CPVs in the future.