Genetic variation of 10 X chromosomal STR loci in Indian population

X chromosomal short tandem repeats have the potential to complement the analyses of the autosomal, Y chromosomal, and mitochondrial DNA markers in forensics and population genetics, and extensive research on X chromosomal markers is being carried out. In the present study, a decaplex for the co-amplification of ten X chromosomal microsatellite loci (DXS6807, DXS8378, DXS7132, DXS6809, DXS6789, DXS101, DXS7133, GATA172D05, HPRTB, and GATA31E08) was optimized and 749 blood samples of unrelated male individuals from the four major linguistic families of India were analyzed. The number of alleles for the studied loci ranged from 7–16 while the gene diversity values varied from 0.408 to 0.855. Two new alleles were observed for the loci DXS101 and HPRTB. Statistical parameters of forensic interest were calculated and all loci were found to be polymorphic. High power of discrimination was observed for the loci DXS101, DXS6809, and DXS6789. The present study demonstrates the efficacy of these X-linked markers for human identification and kinship analysis.