Random amplification of polymorphic DNA

Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), pronounced "rapid", is a DNA profiling technique that generates simple genomic fingerprints without requiring sequence information. Developed in the very early 1990s by Antoni Rafalski and colleagues at E.I. du Pont de Nemours (Wilmington, Delaware, USA), the technique uses short arbitrary primers, typically 10–12 nucleotides (nt) in length, and a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), to amplify anonymous regions in genomic DNA useful for genetic typing, strain discrimination, genome mapping, molecular ecology and population analysis.

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