Loop-mediated isothermal amplification

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a single-tube technique for the amplification of DNA and a low-cost alternative to detect certain diseases that was invented in 2000 at the University of Tokyo. Reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) combines LAMP with a reverse transcription step to allow the detection of RNA.

LAMP is an isothermal nucleic acid amplification technique. In contrast to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, in which the reaction is carried out with a series of alternating temperature steps or cycles, isothermal amplification is carried out at a constant temperature, and does not require a thermal cycler.