Snipper app suite version 4

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Snipper papers
Reference set tools
Europe-East Asia-Africa-America-Oceania classification Black-intermediate-white skin classification Fair-dark or red-blond-brown-black hair classification Blue-greenhazel-brown eye classification 32 STR classification Europe-East Asia-Africa-America-Oceania Marker Panels Skin, Hair and Eye Marker Panels Download forensic MPS AIMs Panel Reference Population Sets
Custom set tools
Single profile classification Multiple profile classification Single profile haplotype classification Multiple profile haplotype classification Multiple profile general classification Classification using frequencies Population data analysis Offline tools Training/testing set design Snipper↔STRUCTURE file converter
Age tools
Blood, 7 CpGs, EpiTYPER (18-104 years) Blood, 7 CpGs, EpiTYPER (2-104 years) Semen, 3 CpGs, SNaPshot Tissue combined (blood & buccal & saliva), 5 CpGs, SNaPshot Blood, 5 CpGs, SNaPshot Buccal swab, 5 CpGs, SNaPshot Saliva, 5 CpGs, SNaPshot Saliva/Buccal swab, 7 CpGs, SNaPshot Cartilage, 3 CpGs, MiSeq
Tissue tool
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Snipper manual Excel input file generator Profile generator
About

Classification of individuals using AIMs

You are entering our portal hosting the Snipper app suite version 4 (last update: November 2025). It is the companion site to several papers.

Its main purpose is classification using ancestry-informative markers (AIMs; currently SNPs, indels or microhaplotypes). Other markers like STRs that might have more than 4 alleles can be used in the general classifier, or in the frequencies classifier, alongside those already mentioned.

More precisely, the Snipper app suite is a web portal for classification of individuals into phenotypes, including biogeographical ancestry (BGA). It has been recently updated to provide enhanced analyses, training set design tools, and R scripts that can be used offline. Reference genotypes are drawn from publically accessible online genetic data repositories. Alternatively, the user may choose their own populations and AIM panels that can be made up from combinations of these, in whole or in part. Cluster analysis can be performed using reduced dimensionality spatial representations like principal component analysis (PCA) or multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), both in 2D and 3D. A range of classification algorithms is also supported including Bayesian likelihood estimates, multinomial logistic regression (MLR), and genetic distance algorithms (using either allele or genotype frequencies).

Snipper is free for the international forensic community to use. You can view version history for a timeline of all changes in the suite.

Important: For full functionality, use an HTML5-compliant browser to access the site, and make sure WebGL is enabled to view 3D PCA and MCA output. If it is already enabled, you will be able to rotate the 3D logo on the left bar (visible only if the browser window width is big enough); otherwise the logo will stay put. Most major browsers enable it by default.

Should you not have access to a compliant browser, the previous 3.5 version of Snipper is still available, but as legacy software, so it will not be further updated.

You can browse your way through the site using the navigation bar above to choose a Snipper tool to perform the analysis of your choice.