12 Facts About Molecular cloning

Molecular cloning is a set of experimental methods in molecular biology that are used to assemble recombinant DNA molecules and to direct their replication within host organisms.

The use of the word Molecular cloning refers to the fact that the method involves the replication of one molecule to produce a population of cells with identical DNA molecules.

Molecular cloning generally uses DNA sequences from two different organisms: the species that is the source of the DNA to be cloned, and the species that will serve as the living host for replication of the recombinant DNA.

Molecular cloning methods are central to many contemporary areas of modern biology and medicine.

Strictly speaking, recombinant DNA refers to DNA molecules, while molecular cloning refers to the experimental methods used to assemble them.

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Molecular cloning takes advantage of the fact that the chemical structure of DNA is fundamentally the same in all living organisms.

Molecular cloning is similar to polymerase chain reaction in that it permits the replication of DNA sequence.

The fundamental difference between the two methods is that molecular cloning involves replication of the DNA in a living microorganism, while PCR replicates DNA in an in vitro solution, free of living cells.

Molecular cloning provides scientists with an essentially unlimited quantity of any individual DNA segments derived from any genome.

Molecular cloning has led directly to the elucidation of the complete DNA sequence of the genomes of a very large number of species and to an exploration of genetic diversity within individual species, work that has been done mostly by determining the DNA sequence of large numbers of randomly cloned fragments of the genome, and assembling the overlapping sequences.

Further, Molecular cloning can be used to produce gene therapies for the treatment of serious disease indications, such as cystic fibrosis, cancer, AIDS and others.

Genes cloned into expression vectors for functional Molecular cloning provide a means to screen for genes on the basis of the expressed protein's function.