Is there a certain method used to analysis?

What DNA analysis method can be used to test paternity?

• Answer:

  Basically you need to generate a genome-wide or otherwise large-scale genotype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotyping) of the child, the mother and all potential fathers. RFLP analysis is the old way of doing it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_fragment_length_polymorphism. It is cumbersome and time-consuming, and requires a lot more technical expertise than newer methods. Nowadays you can do array based genotyping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_microarray. Whole genome sequencing would work, but is overkill for such a simple purpose and is far too expensive and laborious for this use. Targeted sanger sequencing would work ,but you would need to sample a lot of variants so it is not practical. tl;dr: whole genome sequencing is too much information, sanger sequencing is too little, RFLP technology is too old and microarray based methods are just right.