Multiple displacement amplification
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Multiple displacement amplification (MDA) is a DNA amplification technique. This method can rapidly amplify minute amounts of DNA samples to a reasonable quantity for genomic analysis. The reaction starts by annealing random hexamer primers to the template: DNA synthesis is carried out by a high fidelity enzyme, preferentially Φ29 DNA polymerase. Compared with conventional PCR amplification techniques, MDA does not employ sequence-specific primers but amplifies all DNA, generates larger-sized products with a lower error frequency, and works at a constant temperature. MDA has been actively used in whole genome amplification (WGA) and is a promising method for application to single cell genome sequencing and sequencing-based genetic studies.