Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)

CHAPTER TEN – Unique identification of the skeletons

2. The

importance of DNA sequence variations found via NGS. The 1st allele of the D3S1358 marker of skeleton 11/52 and Béla

III

has the following microvariant sequence: TCTA [TCTG]2 [TCTA]j2 , which is different from the consensus variation of the same allele types TCTA [TCTG]3 [TCTA] u» but the allele lengths are identical. At the 5’-end of marker D7S820, before the repeating sequences, we found a C>T sequence variation in the samples from both skeletons. The presence of both macrovariant alleles in both persons suggests that there may have been a close family relationship between person 11/52 and King Béla

III.

3. Genetic

investigations with PCR and NGS methods. Comparison of the A-STR consensus marker data with PCR measurement data revealed 5 marker differences out of 20 between Béla

III

and skeleton II/52_3. This is too many marker differences for a probable Géza

II

(father) - Béla

III

(son) relationship. For this reason, we conducted next generation sequencing analysis on the five differing markers and could only confirm one difference (D2S441), while the rest seem to be PCR artifacts. The difference of only one marker is very much acceptable in the case of a

Béla II

(grandfather) - Béla

III

(grandson) relationship.

4. Statistical

analyses. In our experience, simultaneous analyses of the A-STR markers of the ancient bones of several persons did not produce an acceptable result with traditional kinship statistical software, and a new statistical method became necessary (Zvénigoroszky

et al. 2016).

We conducted the statistical analyses with the negative log-likelihood method developed by Gábor

Tusnády. In

the course of the analysis, all of the available German and Hungarian A-STR marker data, as well as the next generation sequencing data were taken into account 194