ABSTRACT
The investigation of an organism’s genome was greatly enhanced during the early 1970s with the development of recombinant DNA technology. In 1985–1986, a second major development occurred at Cetus Corporation, USA, where researchers developed an in vitro method for the amplification of DNA fragments, referred to as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The PCR is used to amplify a segment of DNA that lies between the two regions of known sequence where two oligonucleotides (deoxy) as primers can bind the opposite strands of DNA due to the complementary nature of base sequences. The chapter describes the basic molecular genetic strategies that utilize RT-PCR as a tool. The usefulness of PCR was quickly recognized by scientists in many different disciplines and it, either directly or after some modifications, has been applied to resolve many problems that were unapproachable by other techniques.
