Comparison of Chemiluminescent and Radioactive Methods of DNA Typing

Abstract

DNA typing has the potential to completely replace the immunological and biochemical genetic tests that have been used over the past decade in parentage testing and forensic analysis. The method is easily performed, but there are several incubation periods which result in the procedure taking a number of days to complete. Nevertheless, DNA typing is attractive because: 1) it is a single technique, 2) with the exception that identical twins cannot be distinguished, conclusive results are always obtainable since the same blot of genomic DNA can be sequentially stripped and tested with different probes, 3) once a blot has been made, the reprobings are extremely quick and easy to perform, 4) it is cost-competitive with the other group of tests, 5) it is more sensitive than the other methods in that far less sample is required for the analysis