Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a novel nucleic acid amplification method that amplified DNA with high specificity, efficiency and rapidity under isothermal conditions using a set of four specially designed primers and a DNA polymerase with strand displacement activity. The cycling reaction continues with accumulation of 109-1010 copies of target in less than an hour. The final products are stem-loop DNA with several inverted repeats of the target and cauliflower-like structures with multiple loops. A positive reaction would be shown as a ladder-like pattern in a gel electrophoresis analysis. Because of its simplicity, high sensitivity and specificity, the LAMP method has been widely applied to the field of food safety inspection.
