Gene synthesis | UPSC
Gene synthesis is an important tool in many fields of recombinant DNA technology including heterologous gene expression, vaccine development, gene therapy and molecular engineering.
Genetic engineering primarily involves the manipulations of genetic material (DNA) to achieve desired goal in a pre-determined way.
Some common terms used to describe genetic engineering are
- A) Gene manipulation
- B) Recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology
- C) Gene cloning (Molecular cloning)
- D) Gene modification
PCR (A piece of DNA taken out from an animal cell can be made to replicate outside a living cell in a laboratory.)
- Polymerase chain reaction is a laboratory technique for generating large quantities of specified DNA.
- The double-stranded DNA of interest is denatured to separate into two individual strands.
- Each strand is then allowed to hybridize with a primer (renaturation).
- The primer-template duplex is used for DNA synthesis (the enzyme-DNA polymerase).
DNA Hybridization
- It measures the degree of genetic similarity between pools of DNA sequences.
- It is usually used to determine the genetic distance between two organisms.
- This has been used extensively in phylogeny and taxonomy.
- Mix labelled DNA of an organism with unlabeled DNA
- Incubation to allow dissociation
- Hybrid DNA formation
- DNA melting
- Note down the melting temperature
Note: Hybridized sequences with a high degree of similarity will bind more firmly, and require more energy to separate them
Cloning (Biotechnology)
It refers to the process of creating clones of organisms or copies of cells orDNA fragments (molecular cloning)
Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female domestic sheep, and the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer.
About Cas 9 : A molecular scissors used in targeted gene editing
- Cas9 is an RNA-guided DNA endonuclease enzyme associated with the CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)
- It plays a vital role in the immunological defense of certain bacteria against DNA viruses (adaptive immunity)
- This property is heavily utilized in genetic engineering applications.
Its main function is to cut DNA and therefore it can alter a cell’s genome.
