The Limits of Individual Identification from Sample Allele Frequencies: Theory and Statistical Analysis

It was shown recently by Homer and colleagues that it may be possible to determine whether a person with known genotypes at a number of markers was part of a pool of DNA from which only frequencies of alleles at the markers are known. In this study, we quantify how well such identification can work in practice. The larger the size of the sample from which the allele frequencies are available, the more independent genetic markers are required to allow individual identification.