Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based DNA typing has been widely used as a reliable and rapid method for gene mapping, disease linkage analysis and population genetic sudies, and also has a profound impact on forensic identification and paternity testing [1,2].

Most studies on DNA typing have been performed on two classes of polymorphisms, VNTR and STR, that are distributed throughout the human genome, and have been reported to be very informative and useful genetic markers for these purposes [3,4]. Determination of allele frequencies and distributions for VNTR and STR loci in a given population is a prerequisite for their application. The aim of our study was to determine the power of each single locus and group of loci for forensic and paternity testing purposes in the Serbian population.