Analytical Workflow for Determining the Authenticity of Human Cell Lines and Tissue Samples by Short Tandem Repeat (STR) Genotype Analysis.

This protocol is part of a two-article series [accompanying article: "A biomedical researcher's guide for analyzing short tandem repeat (STR) genotypes of human cell lines and in vitro tissue samples using three standard authentication algorithms"]. Here, we provide a stepwise procedure for using STR genotyping to determine the authenticity and relatedness of human cell lines and tissue samples used in biomedical research using two different cell line similarity tools (CLASTR of Cellosaurus and a provided Microsoft Excel spreadsheet computer file) together with three commonly used matching algorithms. Evaluation of the three algorithms is described in the accompanying article. This workflow protocol should be used in combination with the accompanying article. The applications of these three algorithms (Tanabe, Masters vs Query, and Masters vs Reference) to STR genotyping data are illustrated in the accompanying article. The different types of results are discussed along with suggestions for evaluating and resolving inconclusive match results. © 2026 Wiley Periodicals LLC. Basic Protocol: Analytical workflow for determining the authenticity of human cell lines and tissue samples by short tandem repeat (STR) genotype analysis.