Patent ID: 6846626

Claim:
A method of amplifying desired regions of nucleic acid from a nucleic acid template comprising: (a) providing a plurality of first PCR primers, each first prune having an overall length of from about 10 nucleotides to about 30 nucleotides and further having a region of fixed nucleotide sequence identical or complementary to a consensus sequence of interest and a region of randomized nucleotide sequence located 5 ′ to, 3 ′ to, or fuming the region of fixed nucleotide sequence; (b) providing a plurality of second PCR primers, each second primer having an overall length of from about 10 nucleotides to about 30 nucleotides and further having a region of arbitrary, yet fixed nucleotide sequence and a region of randomized nucleotide sequence located 5 ′ to, 3 ′ to, or flanking the region of fixed nucleotide sequence; and then (c) amplifying the nucleic acid template via the PCR using the plurality of first PCR primers and the plurality of second PCR primers under conditions wherein a subset of the plurality first primers binds to the consensus sequence of interest substantially wherever it occurs in the template, and a subset of the plurality of second primers binds to the template at locations removed from the first primers such that nucleic acid regions flanked by the first primer and the second primer are specifically amplified.