Development and applications of inexpensive genotyping methods

Single nucleotide polymorphism(SNP) is a major source of genetic differences，and the number of SNP is extremely large.Consequently，a high-throughput，rapid and cost-effective technique is essential for SNP typing.Recently，a set of solutions aimed directly at the bottlenecks in SNP detection were put forward，which including direct PCR from human whole blood，adapter-ligation mediated allele-specific amplification，gene polymorphism detection in one tube，microplate array parallel gel electrophoresis and microchip electrophoresis.These methods have been successfully applied in pharmacogenomics，disease-related research，herbal medicine identification and quality control.The results showed that the advantages of the genotyping platforms are highly specific，sensitive，easy to operate and inexpensive with a good prospect of application.The principles and applications of the genotyping platforms in detail were described in this paper.