An innovative genetic genealogy approach to the identification of three victims of World War I and World War II: The new Forenseq Kintelligence kit

The identification of unknown human remains is still dependent on the availability of comparison samples from potential leads and (in routine practice) the use of STR profiling. In cold cases, or cases where remains have been recovered long after death, establishing a list of leads is an added difficulty. The absence of external clues to the identity of the individual, or the initial failure of identification, imply that leads must be established using either the genetic data itself, or contextual clues. Moreover, kinship confirmation further than the 1st degree is unreliable using autosomal STR alone. The Forenseq Kintelligence kit by Qiagen (formerly Verogen) is presented as a solution to both problems, since it allows kinship comparisons of SNP profiles recovered from unknown degraded remains to the GEDmatch database (GEDmatch PRO tools), which can be used for forensic genetic genealogy. We applied the Kintelligence kit to two skeletonised bodies recovered from the battlefield of Verdun and a body that was buried alongside members of the French Résistance, executed by the Nazis in 1944. In all three cases, we obtained usable genotyping data, and the comparison with the GEDmatch database produced between 3 and 2000 + matches with our samples, all around 200 cM in genetic distance. Our efforts to use these matches as leads to identify these remains were limited by the lack of information provided by GEDmatch PRO, with aliases and email addresses (many obsolete) constituting the bulk of data. The few genealogies linked to matches being mostly anonymous for individuals born after 1920, we originally relied on contacting GEDmatch participants and parsing their responses, which we later learned was not an appropriate approach. After consulting with experienced genetic genealogists, we corrected our approach and are able to present the results and propose improvements to both the GEDmatch database and the process of genealogical investigation itself.