Question: Incases where an mtDNA profile is observed a particular number of times ( X) in a database containing N profiles, its frequency (p) can be calculated as follows:
For example, the mtDNA type 16129A, 263G, 309d, 315.1C occurs twice in 1148 African American profiles, twice in 1655 Caucasian profiles, and not at all in 686 Hispanic profiles when searched against the mtDNA Population Database Monson et al., 2002 ). Using the equations above, calculations for the rarity of this profile in the respective sample sets are as follows:
