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Genomic DNA is always present with a ton of other biomolecules within a cell. Extracting pure DNA from the typical cellular mix of DNA, RNA, proteins, carbohyd
by sandipc 16y ago
Genomic DNA is always present with a ton of other biomolecules within a cell. Extracting pure DNA from the typical cellular mix of DNA, RNA, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, etc. isn't much of a challenge anymore using modern molecular biology, but it is still necessary to study specific genes.
The DNA for a specific naturally occuring gene is only a tiny portion of the total DNA extracted from a cell.
Since 1990 or so, purification of this (relatively) small piece of DNA for a particular gene (from the enormous quantity of genomic DNA) has become pretty trivial in most cases. This is largely due to the invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCR] and the maturation of gene cloning techniques.
- pingswept 16y agoDo I understand correctly that just physically extracting a certain piece of DNA from a cell ("purifying" it) makes it patentable? That seems silly.
- ewjordan 16y agoDo I understand correctly that just physically extracting a certain piece of DNA from a cell ("purifying" it) makes it patentable? That seems silly. Yeah, it's ludicrous - imagine that I tried to file for a patent on using a random (but useful!) phrase in English on the basis that I was able to write a Perl regex to pull it out of a web page. And I won't even qualify that with the usual "poor analogy" disclaimer - it's almost exactly what the current law allows for, just replace "random phrase in English" with "snippet of DNA", and "Perl regex" with "biochemical reaction".
- kljensen 16y agoYes. That is basically the case.