ABSTRACT
This single cell harboring recombinant DNA can then be grown exponentially to generate a large number of bacteria (descendants), each of these contain copies of the original recombinant molecule. Thus, both the resulting bacterial population and the recombinant DNA molecule are commonly referred to as “clones”. In all living organisms, the basic chemical structure of DNA is fundamentally same and molecular cloning takes advantage of this fact. Hence, if a segment of DNA from the species A is inserted into a DNA segment containing the information required for DNA replication, and the resulting recombinant DNA is introduced into the species B from which the replication sequences have been derived, then the foreign DNA will be replicated along with the host cell’s genome (DNA) in the transgenic organism (host). In a fascinating way, we can conclude that molecular cloning is very much similar to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) where it permits the multiplication of DNA sequence. The basic difference between these two popular methods is that molecular cloning involves replication of the DNA in a living host (microorganism) while PCR replicates DNA in an in vitro solution, i.e., free of living cells.
