DNA and Gene Sequencing

Summary of DNA and gene sequencing Sequencing of DNA and genes began in the mid-1970's. At this point, scientists can only sequence several pairs of genes each year. They can not be placed enough to make a single gene except for the entire human genome. DNA Sequencing Since the 1990's only 100,000 genes have been sequenced in only a few laboratories and the sequencing costs are very high. Since then, advances in technology have speeded up and reduced the cost of sequencing, allowing a lab to sequence over 100 million DNA bases per year.

The importance of DNA is very high. The sequence of a gene is like a language that instructs a cell to make a specific protein. Intermediate languages ​​encoded by ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequences translate gene information into protein amino acid sequences. It is a protein that characterizes. This is called the central law of life. RNA is somewhat similar to DNA; they are all nitrogen-containing nucleic acids bound by a sugar-phosphate backbone. How structural and functional differences distinguish between RNA and DNA Structurally, RNA is single stranded and DNA is double stranded. DNA contains thymine, and RNA contains uracil. RNA nucleotides contain sugar ribose, not deoxyribose, which is part of the DNA. Functionally, DNA maintains information that encodes proteins, and RNA uses information to enable cells to synthesize specific proteins.

Transcription is performed by a DNA-dependent RNA polymerase that copies the sequence of the DNA strand to RNA. To initiate gene transcription, RNA polymerase binds to a DNA sequence called a promoter and separates DNA strands. It then copies the gene sequence into the messenger RNA transcript until it reaches the DNA region called the terminator where it stops and is separated from the DNA. Like human DNA-dependent DNA polymerase RNA polymerase II is an enzyme that transcribes most of the genes in the human genome and functions as part of a large protein complex with multiple regulatory subunits and accessory subunits .