GENERAL-APPROACH TO ANALYSIS OF POLYMORPHIC SHORT TANDEM REPEAT LOCI

Polymerase chain reaction amplification products of 22 known polymorph ic short tandem repeat (STR) loci were subjected to denaturing polyacr ylamide gel electrophoresis and detected using a silver staining metho d. Loci that amplified efficiently and revealed the fewest amplificati on-related artifacts with this detection method were selected for deve lopment of allelic ladders. The combination of allelic ladders and sil ver stain detection provides an inexpensive and general non-isotopic a nalytical method for DNA identification. This approach has immediate a pplication in forensic analysis, paternity determination human cell li ne identification and monitoring of bone marrow transplants. It can al so be adapted to more general applications of genetic analysis in huma n and other species including detection of genetic disorders and cance rs.