Polony

Polony is a contraction of "polymerase colony," a small colony of DNA.

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"Polonies are discrete clonal amplifications of a single DNA molecule, grown on a solid-phase surface. This approach greatly improves the signal-to-noise ratio. Polonies can be generated using several techniques that include solid-phase PCR in polyacrylamide gels, bridge PCR, rolling-circle amplification, BEAMing (beads, emulsions, amplification and magnetics)-based cloning on beads and massively parallel signature sequencing (MPSS) to generate clonal bead arrays." [1]

In one conceptually simple way to create polonies, a solution containing DNA fragments is poured onto a microscope slide dilute enough so that individual molecules are separated. DNA polymerase is added, which copies each fragment repeatedly, creating millions of polonies, each of which contains only copies of the original fragment of DNA. These "polonies" are then used for various kinds of DNA research like DNA sequencing.

However, notwithstanding the erudition above, 'polony' also appears as a British slang term in Graham Greene's book 'Brighton Rock', meaning a plump person, likened to a fat sausage or 'Bologna'.

References

• Polony technology guide
• Fan Jb, Chee, MS, Gunderson, KL (2006) Highly parallel genomic assays. Nature Reviews of Genetics (8):632-44.
• Shendure, Porreca et al. Accurate multiplex polony sequencing of an evolved bacterial genome
• Zhang et al. Sequencing genomes from single cells by polymerase cloning.