Microsatellites or simple sequence repeats provide an attractive source of genetic polymorphisms for both mammals and plants (1). Microsatellites can be detected by PCR using minute amounts of starting material and they provide codominant markers with a high degree of allelic polymorphism. However, these markers are obtained through a difficult and labor-intensive procedure. In contrast, RAPD m...

We propose a genome sequencing strategy, which is neither divide-and-conquer (clone by clone) nor the shotgun approach. Random PCR-based and PCR relay sequencing constitute the basis of this novel strategy. Most of the genome is sequenced by the former process that requires only a set of non-specific primers and a template DNA. Random PCR-based sequencing reduces redundancy in sequencing by exp...

Metagenome, a mixture of different genomes (as a rule, bacterial), represents a pattern, and the analysis of its composition is, currently, one of the challenging problems of bioinformatics. In the present study, the possibility of evaluating metagenome composition by DNA-marker methods is investigated. These methods are based on using primers, short nucleic acid fragments. Each primer picks ou...

A very sensitive and specific method for the random amplification of whole DNA molecules and genomes ranging from 400 base pairs (bp) to 40 Megabase (Mb) is described. This simple, two step PCR (1-3) strategy utilizes tagged random primers that consist of a pool of all possible 3' sequences for binding to the target DNA and a constant 5' region for the detection of incorporated primers. As litt...