The synthetic (TG)n polydinucleotide: a probe for gene flow and paternity studies in wild plant populations?

Miniand microsatellite 'fingerprint' probes have provided animal geneticists and behavioural ecologists with a powerful means of exploring fine scale differentiation and breeding behaviour in natural populations (1, 2). Unfortunately, the development of fingerprint technology in plants has been disappointingly slow. There are relatively few reports of the use of minisatellite probes in plants (e.g. 3, 4, 5) and most studies refer to ornamental or crop plants. The most commonly reported problems with minisatellite probes are poor or unreliable hybridization, uninterpretable band patterns and low levels of detected variation. Alternative techniques, potentially capable of detecting fingerprint levels of variability and suitable for gene flow and paternity studies in wild plant populations, are currently being sought. Possible approaches include the use of probes for repeats of simple nucleotide motifs (6, 7, 8) and the use of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to produce random amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs) (9).