ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the biochemical and molecular markers their advantages, disadvantages and the applications of the marker in comparison with other markers types. It presents the molecular markers in plant biotechnology: biochemical marker – allozymes, molecular markers, restriction fragment length polymorphism, random amplified polymorphic DNA, amplified fragment length polymorphism, minisatellites, variable number of tandem repeats, polymerase chain reaction-sequencing, and sanger's chain termination method. They also include microsatellites or simple sequence repeat, inter simple sequence repeats, single-strand conformation polymorphism, cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence, sequence characterised amplified region, and single nucleotide polymorphism. Allozymes are allelic variants of enzymes encoded by structural genes. A molecular markers a DNA sequence that is readily detected and whose inheritance can be easily be monitored. Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism is a technique in which organisms may be differentiated by analysis of patterns derived from cleavage of their DNA. A noval class of DNA markers namely single nucleotide polymorphism in genome has recently become highly proffered in genomic studies.
