BABS1201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Dna Paternity Testing, Human Genome Project, Thermophile

• School: UNSW, UNSW Sydney
• Department: Biotechnology & Biomolecular Sciences
• Course: BABS1201
• Professor: john

Document Summary

Multiple human genomes have now been fully sequenced. The dna for the first sequence was compiled from several people, including james d. watson and j. craig. To describe the pcr technique and the basic steps involved. A single gene in the human is ~1/1,000,000th of the dna. A virus infecting a human being might infect a few cells out of millions. The challenge: to detect the gene or viral dna in the presence of billions of bases of human dna. Pcr relies on the activity of dna polymerase which requires: Dna template (pattern to synthesise on); single-stranded dna. Primer; short piece of dna to add on to. Free nucleotides; to add to the growing chain. Each cycle doubles number of dna molecules. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 220 is a million. But dna polymerase from the thermophile thermus aquaticus is stable at 98oc and works at 70oc. Pcr is conducted in an automated pcr machine.