1 / 10

Lecture 44

Recombinant DNA technology. First technical breakthrough in medical genetics was chromosome analysis in 1950sSecond is recombinant DNA, in the 1970s - 1990sThis will culminate in the complete DNA sequence of humans (the Human Genome Project)There are now many methods available to analyse patients

aveline
Download Presentation

Lecture 44

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

    1. Lecture 44 Prof Duncan Shaw

    2. Recombinant DNA technology First technical breakthrough in medical genetics was chromosome analysis in 1950s Second is recombinant DNA, in the 1970s - 1990s This will culminate in the complete DNA sequence of humans (the Human Genome Project) There are now many methods available to analyse patients’ DNA in the lab, to identify mutations, to discover new genes, etc.

    3. How to purify a gene First method is by “cloning”, i.e. introduce the gene into a bacterial cell then grow up large amounts and extract DNA (in vivo) Second method is by “polymerase chain reaction” (PCR) using DNA polymerase to amplify the gene in a test-tube (in vitro) Both methods have their uses but PCR is preferred in medical applications because it is quicker and cheaper

    4. Bacteria provide the means Bacteria have been vital in developing DNA technology Thermus aquaticus (which lives in hot springs) provides DNA polymerase enzyme for PCR Escherichia coli (which lives in our guts) provides “plasmids” (mini-chromosomes) used in cloning 100s of bacterial species provide “restriction enzymes” that cut DNA at specific sequences of bases (4 - 8 bases long)

    5. Applications In biomedical research - to identify the genes responsible for human characteristics (including disease) To analyse what goes wrong with these genes in disease (pathology) To provide prenatal and presymptomatic diagnosis, carrier detection, risk calculation New therapies (drugs, gene therapy)

More Related