PCR PRIMED WITH VNTR CORE SEQUENCES YIELDS SPECIES-SPECIFIC PATTERNS AND HYPERVARIABLE PROBES

The use of genomic DNA-based techniques in ecological and evolutionary studies has been limited by the availability of suitable probes for s pecies of interest due to the technical difficulty of isolating and ap plying such probes. We have developed a simple technique that directs polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification to regions rich in varia ble number of tandem repeats (VNTRs). By using published VNTR core seq uences as primers in PCRs, fragments were amplified that showed little variation within a species, but did show differences between species. When the amplified fragments were used as probes with genomic DNA Sou thern blots they produced hypervariable single-locus or few-locus patt erns in fish, birds, and humans. We have named this procedure as Direc ted Amplification of Minisatellite-region DNA (DAMD).