Why is nucleic acid hybridization important?
1 Answer
Hybridisation is a basic property of nucleotide sequences and is taken advantage of in numerous molecular biology techniques.
Explanation:
Genetic relatedness of two species can be determined by hybridisation segments of their DNA. Due to sequence similarity between closely related organisms, higher temperatures are required to melt such DNA hybrids as compared to more distantly related organisms.
A variety of different methods like polymerase chain reaction use hybridisation to pin point the origin of a DNA sample.
Short DNA sequences are hybridised to cellular mRNA to identify expressed genes. This process is also used for purification of specific DNA and comparative gene expression analysis.
It has led to DNA / RNA detection and quantification on solid phase blots as well as DNA / RNA cytogenic location on cells.
Nucleic acid hybridisation in quantitative analysis permits detection of mutations such as deletion, insertion and copy number variation for disease diagnosis.
Incorporation of next generation sequencing with nucleic acid hybridisation has opened a new genomic era and has enabled high through put sophisticated analysis for personalised medicine by discovering novel genes and single nucleotide polymorphism.
Nucleic acid hybridisation is a technique in which single stranded nucleic acids are allowed to interact so that complexes called hybrids are formed by molecules with similar complementary sequences. This forms the basis of many research applications, all relying on simple base pairing specificity of nucleic acids to generate a signal through a labelled probe.
