Guide To Learn
Some ethicists worry that synthetic biology makes it easy to design dangerous organisms that could be released maliciously. However, synthetic biology can also mitigate bioterrorism risks by allowing scientists to create a variant of a microorganism that is less dangerous, which could out-compete a dangerous virus or bacteria strain. Synthetic biology could also be used […]
Personalized medicine to treat chronic disease is as important in the 21st century as treating infectious disease was in the 20th century. Synthetic biology may enable new treatment techniques for cancer, immune diseases, and metabolic disorders. Given that these diseases are leading causes of death, synthetic biology applied to personalized medicine could be as groundbreaking […]
Sustainable manufacturing is firmly on the positive side of the pros and cons of synthetic biology. Unfortunately engineered yeasts and bacteria produce unsustainably harvested compounds, like flower oils for perfume. Using living systems as a natural bio-factory to develop drug compounds or fuel ingredients eliminates the industrial waste of a purely chemical manufacturing process. Industrial […]
Synthetic biology has already enabled the rapid public health response to Covid-19. Novartis developed a Covid-19 vaccine by deploying an existing synthetic biology emergency vaccine development pipeline that had been designed in response to the H1N1 flu pandemic. Not only can synthetic biology help with vaccine development, there are synthetic biology applications in vaccine delivery. At […]
This is a molecular biological technique used for amplifying specific DNA sequences. The target DNA sequence can be amplified billions of times. A PCR reaction requires target DNA, free nucleotides, DNA primers and the enzyme Taq polymerase. This enzymatically mediated in vitro amplification of specific target sequence is achieved by simultaneous extension of complementary strands of DNA […]
In this technique, short oligonucleotide (10 bp long) primers are used to amplify nanogram amounts of total genomic DNA by PCR. The oligonucleotide primers bind to complementary sequences in the template DNA and produce discrete DNA products. Nucleotide variation between different sets of template will result in the presence or absence of bands because of […]
Restriction digestion is the process of cutting DNA molecules into fragments with the enzymes called restriction endonucleases. These enzymes act as molecular scissors and cleave the DNA at precise sequence. Restriction enzymes are basically bacterial enzymes that form a part of their defence mechanism against foreign DNA (discussed in chapter 9). The process requires restriction enzymes […]
Blotting techniques are important tools both in molecular biology and in clinical research. These techniques are used to identify proteins and nucleic acids. The blotting techniques generally involve fours steps, namely: There are three main types of blotting techniques, namely: Southern Blotting This is a DNA-DNA hybridization technique. It is often used to identify the […]
Gel electrophoresis uses electricity to separate charged macromolecules by size, as they migrate through a gel matrix. The gel acts as a molecular sieve, as the macromolecular mixture moves through the gel under the influence of an electric field. Thus, the molecules of varying size are separated. DNA Electrophoresis ‘Agarose gel electrophoresis’ is the easiest […]
This chapter provides information regarding the practical side of molecular biology. Molecular biology methods are used extensively in modern-day drug discovery, research and development, and diagnostics. In the previous chapters too, various other techniques in molecular biology such as cloning, FISH, DNA and protein arrays and DNA foot printing had been covered. This chapter focuses […]