GENE CLONING AND GENOMICS (Principles and Applications)

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the genetic material of cells. It carries information in a coded form from cell to cell and from parent to offspring. A gene is a linear array of nucleotides located in a particular position on a particular chromosome that encodes a specific functional product (a protein or RNA molecule). When a gene is active, its information is copied first into another nucleic acid, ribonucleic acid (RNA), which in turn directs the synthesis of the gene products, the specific proteins. This lecture introduces some basic concepts of DNA, proteins, genes and genomes.