Figure 8. Competition between specific and non-specific amplification at extremely low level DNA amounts.

With extremely low-level DNA amounts (<∼2 copies), stochastic, spurious, non-specific amplification could outcompete allele-specific amplification. The Bacillus anthracis melt-MAMA targeting the A.Br.003 clade [4] stochastically amplified allele-specific product and non-specific spurious products at amounts of less than a single copy (∼0.19 copies). (A and B) The respective amplification plots of genomic DNA of ‘G’ allele and ‘A’ SNP allele templates show the amplification curves of templates at 1.15 ng and at two low level ten-fold dilution series (near-single copy and less than a single copy) in replicates of eight. The number assigned to each amplification curve (3, 8–9) denotes the DNA amount for the starting template. (C & D) The temperature-dissociation (melt) curve derivatives for the 1.15 ng and lowest template amounts are shown. This panel illustrates that genotyping accuracy was not compromised at DNA template amounts near single copy level, but spurious amplification was observed in dilution points below this level. This spurious amplification had a unique melt-profile that did not match the profile of either allele types (red arrow).