Enhancing and Sustaining the ALFRED-FROG-kb Forensic Resource

• NCJ Number: 254577
• Author(s): Kenneth K. Kidd
• Date Published: June 2019
• Length: 13 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2016-DN-BX-0162
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Technical Assistance); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Description

Annotation

The goal of this project was to improve the ALFRED (the ALllele FREquency Database), which was put online in 2000 and has grown from a few thousand allele frequency tables (one population for one polymorphism) to over 66 million.

Abstract

The two major achievements of the project were 1) greatly increasing the quantity of curated data related to forensic panels in the database and 2) improving the functionality provided by the unique FROG=kb and ALFRED interfaces. The initial FROG-kb website was introduced in 2011 as a prototype to support forensic use of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). In the years since, ongoing research into how the database and web interface can better serve forensics has resulted in extensive redesign of the database interface and functionality. FROG-kb provides a freely accessible web interface that facilitates forensic practice and can be useful for teaching and research. The site has functional improvements, extensive new documentation, and new reference panels of SNPs with new curated data. FROG-kb focuses on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and provides reference population data for several published panels of individual identification SNPs (IISNPs) and several published panels of ancestry inference SNPs (AISNPs). This project report includes both ongoing and complete activities that address the specific goals of the project. A key ongoing component of this project is accumulating forensic-related material from various data sources, curating the information for entry into ALFRED, and then implementing the relevant data into FROG-kb. Major activities and accomplishments are described, with attention to the accomplishments during the extension period January 1, 2019 through March 31, 2019. Ways in which the results have been disseminated to communities of interest are described, and presentation sources on forensic applications of SNPs are listed, along with publications for the years 2016-2019.