A Practical Guide to High Resolution Melt Analysis Genotyping

Introduction Classifying and understanding genetic variation between populations and individuals is an important aim in the field of genomics. Many common diseases (diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, etc.) and clinically relevant phenotypic traits are elicited from the complex interaction between a subset of multiple gene products and environmental factors. The unique genetic profile of an individual confers susceptibility to a given trait or disease. Consequently, there is a rapidly growing interest in quantifiable methods for mutation screening in life science research. Such methods are used for detecting genes responsible for diverse traits in organisms from all biological kingdoms. Some notable examples include resistance to parasites or yield in plants (Dracatos et al. 2008, Alves et al. 2008), drug resistance in microorganisms (Zhao et al. 2010), and genetic susceptibility to cancer in humans (Lascorz et al. 2010).