The use of arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction in cancer research

There is a great need for techniques that detect the genome alterations pre sent in cancer cells. Here, we present a review of the arbitrarily primed p olymerase chain reaction (AP-PCR), a genomic mutation detection method with some unique advantages: (i) It can detect most types of mutations that usu ally occur in tumors (except point mutations). (ii) it is especially useful to detect moderate gains in DNA, which most methods currently in use canno t detect. (iii) It allows detection and cloning of alterations in a single experiment. (iv) It is inexpensive and does not require special equipment. We discuss some characteristics of this method and review some of its achie vements in cancer research.