Diagenetic research of factors influencing the performance of biomolecular investigations of human skeletal remains from Spanish Civil War graves.

Abstract

During the Spanish Civil War and the posterior dictatorship, a huge number of people disappeared during the war or in episodes of repression. A large number of victims remain unidentified. One of the main limitations of these analyses is the difficulty of obtaining informative STRs profiles from the remains, limiting the identification of missing persons. With this aim, this work focuses on multidisciplinary research to investigate the relationship between the factors (physical-chemical and biological) that influence the state of preservation (anthropological and genetic) in order to understand the influence of these factors and increase the number of identifications of victims in the context of the Spanish Civil War. For this purpose, we have collected and analyzed the physicochemical composition of the graves and performed the anthropological analysis. Subsequently, the autosomal and Y-chromosome STRs of the skeletal remains were analysed. Finally, we developed a predictive statistical model to determine the most influential variable in obtaining an informative profile of autosomal STRs (>12STRs).With this, it has been possible to demonstrate that, in addition to DNA concentration and inhibition, also organic matter influence in successfully obtaining an informative autosomal STRs profile from skeletal remains buried in mass graves of Spanish Civil War.