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Indels (human origin genetics)

By Alistair Boddy-Evans, About.com

Definition:

Indels, short for insertion/deletion markers, are stings of mutated base pairs in DNA and are identified by their genomic position and their length. They are useful because the chances of two indel mutation of the same length occurring in the same genomic position are negligible and they can therefore be used map common ancestry in kinship and human origin studies.

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