Making ‘random amplification’ predictable in whole genome analysis

One of the remaining obstacles to large-scale genetic mapping is the lack of an efficient way to genotype hundreds of thousands of genetic markers. Recently Jordan et al. reported that the ‘random’ sequences amplified by degenerate oligonucleotide primer (DOP)-PCR can be precisely mapped onto the human genome sequence and that it is possible to predict which DNA sequences will be amplified by a particular degenerate primer.