Advances in Measurements for Molecular Biology

Abstract

The emergence of System Biology has changed the focus of Molecular Biology discipline from molecular characterization to its functional activities. Today, the major thrust of Molecular Biology is to investigate the dynamic behavior of various molecules and polymer of molecules at intra and inter cellular level. In post-genomic era, measurement techniques to measure the changes in concentration of various components of cells like – protein, enzyme, mRNA, DNA etc., become very important. These techniques become the main source of information to validate the mathematical model of cellular activities like – metabolic pathways, signal transduction and gene expression. Various measurement techniques like – spectrophotometer, electrophoresis, DNA Microarray etc., are prominently used in the wet laboratories. The main focus of the article is DNA Microarray, which has been proved as an important tool to understand the molecular basis of heredity, genetic variation and gene expression patterns of the cell. This paper discusses fundamental techniques and recent advances of DNA microarray.