What is DNA Fingerprinting?

The chemical structure of everyone's DNA is the same. The only difference between people or even animals is the order of the base parts. I described a little about the base parts in the last post published in this blog. There are so many millions of base parts in eachnperson's DNA that every single person has a different sequence. Using these sequences, every person could be identified solely by the sequence of their base pairs. However, because there are so many millions of base pairs, the task would be very time-consuming. Instead. scientists are able to use a shorter method, because of repeating patterns in DNA. These patterns do not, however, give an individual "fingerprint," but they are able to determine whether two DNA samples are from the same person, related people, or non-related people. Scientists use a small number of sequences of DNA that are known to vary among individuals a great deal, and analyze those to get a certain probability of a match.

Reference: www.protist.biology.washington.edu

So, What is DNA Anyway?

As you read each post in this blog, you should get a great understanding of what the technology of DNA Fingerprinting is, along with how and why it used. Before I begin to explain this amazing technological advance to you all, I think I should start by giving a brief explanation of what “DNA” is first. D.N.A stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid. DNA is a chemical structure that forms chromosomes. A piece of a chromosome that dictates a particular trait is called a gene. Structurally, DNA is a double helix, which means that two strands of genetic material are spiraled around each other. Each strand contains a sequence of bases which are also called nucleotides. A base is one of four chemicals (adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine). The two strands of DNA are connected at each base. Each base will only bond with one other base, as follows: Adenine (A) will only bond with Thymine (T), and Guanine (G) will only bond with cytosine (C). So for example, if one strand looks like this---  A-A-C-T-G-A-T-A-G, then the DNA strand bound to it will look like this---  T-T-G-A-C-T-A-T-C. DNA strands are read in a particular direction, from the top (called the “5” or “five prime” end) to the bottom (called the “3” or “three prime” end). In a double helix, the strands go opposite ways. Now that you have a basic idea of what DNA is and how it is examined, the posts that will follow this one and all the information that I will provide for you should now be easier to understand. I hope you all enjoy this very interesting and informative blog on this subject as much as I do. Please feel free to leave your comments and posts as often as you want. Enjoy!!!

Background Information

Molecular Biologist Alec Jeffreys devises a way to make the analysis of more than 3 million units in the human DNA sequence much more manageable by comparing only the parts of the sequence that show the greatest variation amoung people. His method quickly finds its way into the courts, where it is used to exonerate people wrongly accused of crimes and to finger the true culprits. The year that this DNA fingerprinting development started was 1984. I truly think that this invention of technology is an extremely important one and has had nothing but good results from it. I hope you all enjoy reading and posting on this topic. Any questions or comments please feel free to post. I check back on this blog often.