Hypervariable ‘minisatellite’ regions in human DNA

Abstract
The human genome contains many dispersed tandem-repetitive minisatellite regions detected via a shared 10-15-base pair core sequence similar to the generalized recombinations signal (x) of Escherichia coli. Many minisatellites are highly polymorphic due to allelic variation in repeat copy number in the minisatellite. A probe based on a tandem-repeat of the core sequence can detect many highly variable loci simultaneously and can provide an individual-specific DNA fingerprint of general use in human genetic analysis.