SCANNING OF NUCLEIC-ACIDS BY IN-VITRO AMPLIFICATION - NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND APPLICATIONS

Nucleic acids can be characterized using a variety of ''fingerprinting '' techniques usually based on nucleic acid hybridization or enzymatic amplification. The scanning of nucleic acids by amplification with ar bitrary oligonucleotide primers has become popular because it can gene rate simple-to-complex patterns from anonymous DNA or RNA templates wi thout requiring prior knowledge of nucleic acid sequence or cloned or characterized probes. Discrete loci are amplified within genomic DNA, DNA complementary to mRNA populations (cDNA), cloned DNA fragments, an d even PCR products. The potential and limitations of the various geno me scanning techniques, novel improvements, and their recent use in co mparative and experimental biology applications, including the analysi s of plant and bacterial genomes are discussed.