Artifact
A non-allelic product of the amplification process (e.g., stutter, non-templated nucleotide addition, or other non-specific product), an anomaly of the detection process (e.g., pull-up or spike), or a byproduct of primer synthesis (e.g., 'dye blob') that may be observed on an electropherogram; some artifacts may complicate the interpretation of DNA profiles when they cannot be distinguished from the actual allele(s) from a particular sample.