Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference

January 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

The Comparison Of Whole Genome Amplified DNA With Use Of The Illumina Beadstation

Brenda M Murdoch¹ , Elisa Marques¹ , Karin Schimd¹ , Stephanie McKay¹ , Zhiquan Wang¹ , Donald Nkrumah¹ , Clare Gill² , Stephen Moore¹

¹  Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

²  Department of Animal Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

Whole Genome Amplification (WGA) can be employed when DNA quantities are limited. For applications such as genotyping however it is important to determine if any amplification bias is occurring that may skew results. Allelic bias in single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis may result in animals which are heterozygous at a particular locus appearing homozygous when WGA DNA is used. When high throughput genotyping analysis is undertaken allelic bias in the WGA DNA would have serious consequences. We have prepared WGA DNA from blood cards, hair bulbs and purified genomic DNA samples at various concentrations. These samples were genotyped using the Illumina Beadstation and an Oligo Pooled Array of 1536 loci. The results of the amplified DNA were compared with the results obtained from the same individuals using non-amplified DNA. Our results indicate that the total number of loci successfully genotyped are slightly reduced in WGA DNA verses non-WGA DNA. However, with sufficient amounts of starting DNA whole genome amplification can be used for SNP analysis without bias occurring.