The 6th volume of "Advances in Forensic Haemogenetics" comprises the scientific contributions to the 16th Congress of the International Society for Forensic Haemogenetics ISFH held on Sept., 12-16, 1995 at Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The numerous papers mainly deal with the applicability of DNA technology to forensic questions. The invited speakers approached important topics such as variation of mitochondrial DNA in ancient and modern humans, the "STR approach" to solve forensic questions, the statistical analysis of STR data, automation of DNA analysis, long PCR and its applications, national DNA databases and ethical and legal aspects of DNA analysis. It has become obvious that PCR based polymorphic systems clearly dominate the scene of forensic DNA analysis worldwide. It will however be necessary to make efforts to standardize the still increasing number of systems with regard to nomenclature to achieve a universal comparability of results. Legal systems differ from country to country which has to be taken into account when reporting DNA results. There is still controversy about the way DNA results are to be presented in court-rooms. We should make efforts to assess the value of DNA evidence by a common scientifc statistical approach that is comprehensive enough to treat all possible hypotheses such as involved relatives, different ethnics and/or the not so rare situations with mixed stains.

th This volume comprises the Proceedings of the 15 Congress of the International Society of Forensic Haemogenetics (ISFH), held for the first time in Venezia Lido, th th Italy, on 13 -15 October 1993. The abstracts of the scientific contributions sent to the Congress have been sub divided into chapters with numbers and headings corresponding to the Congress sessions listed in the final programme. A general index of all authors, in alpha betical order, is given at the end of the book. The book consists of 188 contributions and addresses several problems presently being discussed in forensic haemogenetics. The main portion is, of course, devoted to DNA technology: present and future trends in DNA method ology, DNA polymorphisms in paternity testing and in criminal investigation, DNA sequencing, PCR methodology, quality control and quality assurance. Data have been accumulated on population genetics and biostatistics. A new look has been given at old friends, with important contributions on the molecular biology of classical markers. Conventional genetic markers have been studied. Problems connected with genetic typing and human rights have been dealt with in depth, and the history and geography of human genes have been elucidated."