Recent advances and application in whole-genome multiple displacement amplification.

Background: The extremely small amount of DNA in a cell makes it difficult to study the whole genome of single cells, so whole-genome amplification (WGA) is necessary to increase the DNA amount and enable downstream analyses. Multiple displacement amplification (MDA) is the most widely used WGA technique. Results: Compared with amplification methods based on PCR and other methods, MDA renders high-quality DNA products and better genome coverage by using phi29 DNA polymerase. Moreover, recently developed advanced MDA technologies such as microreactor MDA, emulsion MDA, and micro-channel MDA have improved amplification uniformity. Additionally, the development of other novel methods such as TruePrime WGA allows for amplification without primers. Conclusion: Here, we reviewed a selection of recently developed MDA methods, their advantages over other WGA methods, and improved MDA-based technologies, followed by a discussion of future perspectives. With the continuous development of MDA and the successive update of detection technologies, MDA will be applied in increasingly more fields and provide a solid foundation for scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]