33 - Amplified fragment length polymorphism: Studies on plant development

Abstract

This chapter discusses the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technology. It focuses on AFLP technology as a tool to address important questions in plant developmental biology. It describes the basic AFLP protocol, which can be divided into four steps. During the first step deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) s are isolated from the sources one wishes to compare. As second step, specific double-stranded (ds) oligodeoxynucleotide adapters are ligated to the ends of the digested DNAs. This is done to generate chimeric molecules of known and unknown sequence. The third step is the PCR phase. And during the last step PCR products are resolved on polyacrylamide sequencing gels and subsequently analyzed for fingerprints of interest. The chapter provides a flow diagram to present a clear picture of the process. The chapter concludes by providing the amazing variety of applications where the AFLP technology has been used. AFLP has been used for bacterial and pathogen genotyping, and for immunological and epidemiological studies. It has also found an important role in ecological, evolutionary, and biodiversity studies of organisms from a wide range of taxa. This amazing variety of uses for AFLP technology is a testament to its inventors, who proposed many of the broad uses in their original patent proposal, (well before AFLP had been put to the tests. This technology is bound to be a major player in answering a wide range of questions being asked in biology, including those questions related to the plant development biology.