Author(s)

Le Truong¹, Hannah Lui Park^1*, Seong Sil Chang¹, Argyrios Ziogas¹, Susan L. Neuhausen², Sophia S. Wang², Leslie Bernstein², Hoda Anton-Culver¹

¹Department of Epidemiology, Genetic Epidemiology Research Institute, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
²Division of Cancer Etiology, Department of Population Sciences, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope, Duarte, CA, USA.

Blood samples have traditionally been used as the main source of DNA for genetic analysis. How-ever, this source can be difficult in terms of collection, transportation, and long-term storage. In this study, we investigated whether human nail clippings could be used as a source of DNA for SNP genotyping, null-allele detection, and whole-genome amplification. From extracted nail DNA, we achieved amplicons up to a length of ~400 bp and >96% concordance for SNP genotyping and 100% concordance for null-allele detection compared to DNA derived from matched blood sam-ples. For whole-genome amplification, OmniPlex performed better than Multiple Displacement Amplification with a success rate of 89.3% and 76.8% for SNP genotyping and null-allele detection, respectively. Concordance was ~98% for both methods. When combined with OmniPlex whole-genome amplification, human nail clippings could potentially be used as an alternative to whole blood as a less invasive and more convenient source of DNA for genotyping studies.

Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP), Nail Clippings, Genotyping, Whole Genome Amplification (WGA)

Truong, L. , Park, H. , Chang, S. , Ziogas, A. , Neuhausen, S. , Wang, S. , Bernstein, L. and Anton-Culver, H. (2015) Human Nail Clippings as a Source of DNA for Genetic Studies. Open Journal of Epidemiology, 5, 41-50. doi: 10.4236/ojepi.2015.51006.