Arbitrarily primed PCR

Arbitrarily Primed Polymerase Chain Reaction (AP-PCR) is a DNA fingerprinting technique developed in 1990 by John Welsh and Michael McClelland. The method amplifies multiple anonymous loci using a single short primer of arbitrary sequence under low-stringency conditions. Amplified fragments are typically separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) and visualized with radiolabeling to produce characteristic multilocus banding patterns. AP-PCR does not require prior sequence information and was among the first PCR–based genome scanning approaches developed for rapid DNA profiling (see arbitrarily amplified DNA).