Amplification from Archival Materials

The ability of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify from partially degraded and relatively impure preparations has allowed the technique to amplify nucleic acid sequences from archival materials, which in many institutions consist of paraffin-embedded tissue samples (1 ,2 ). This ability has allowed the carrying out of large scale retrospective studies of archival materials and has facilitated the use of materials from multiple institutions from different countries (3 ).