Synopsis
Can the son or daughter of a baseball pitcher or cricket bowler throw a ball 100 miles an hour? Is the son or daughter of an opera singer also an opera singer? Is a house with functional light switches lit? The line of thinking in these rhetorical questions also applies to human genetics. What do baseball pitchers, opera sing ers, light switches, and the Human Genome Project have in common? These questions address the issue of potential versus realization of function. Although sons and daughters of baseball pitchers and opera singers may have inherited the mechanical attributes to be baseball pitchers and opera singers, they may not, at any point in time, be baseball pitchers or opera singers. A house with functional light switches is not lit unless the light switches are on. Similarly, all of the genes discovered and sequenced as a result of the Human Genome Project are not expressed at the same time. Genome project information will allow us to deter mine the repertoire of genes in an individual, which is analogous to determining where the light switches in a house are located and whether they are functional (a mutation or deletion in the Genome Project Model). The pattern of "on" light switches in a house gives us functional information as to what the family inside is doing (e. g. , eating, reading, sleeping). Similarly, the pattern of gene expression (RNA) gives us information on what our bodies are doing (e. g.
Synopsis
The molecular basis of disease is the driving force in biomedical research. Gene detection, quantification, and localization are required to determine disease pathogenesis. In as much as DNA is the genetic potential in a particular organism, RNA and protein expression are the functional result of this genetic programme. This book describes methods to quantify and localize gene expression, with a particular emphasis on the sensitive detection of low abundance gene expression. Sensitive detection of gene expression has been hindered by poor recovery or preservation of target sequences. The text describes optimized methods to ensure full recovery and preservation of targets from specimen acquisition through detection of specific targets and final analysis. This text also focuses upon in situ analysis of cells and tissues
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.