Nucleotide variation of the mitochondrial cytochrome B gene in the Malay population

Identification of coding region polymorphism in addition to the hypervariable regions is helpful to increase the value of mitochondrial DNA polymorphic data in forensic genetics. In this study, DNA sequence of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene was analysed among unrelated ethnic Malays as an initial effort to determine the sequence variation within the cytochrome b gene of mtDNA coding region. Totally 13 different sequence types containing 15 polymorphic sites were found. Sequence positions with high frequency and a novel polymorphism site were observed. The results suggest that sequence polymorphisms of the human mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b gene can be applied as an additional marker in individual identification for forensic casework and may be valuable in anthropological and population studies. However, more samples must be analysed