The Biochip and Advancements in Medical Treatment Essay -- Exploratory

The Biochip and Advancements in Medical Treatment Advances in microchips lapse daily, but a recent advance in the area backside only be called revolutionary. No, these are not a to a greater extent ripe(p) breed of thin silicon wafers, better known as calculating machine chips. They are called biochips. A blending of silicon technology with biology has produced a groundbreaking new technology. It can be used to tell how actively a gene works, whether it carries any mutations, and even aid in the gracious genome project, a colossal term project to map the entire tender genome. The biochip is a square of glass about the area of a dime. It is cover with DNA probes. The probes are oligonucleotides, strands of DNA six to nine bases long. A long strand of DNA of an unknown sequence is to be tested to retrieve its sequence. First, it is fragmented and then washed over the chip. The fragments only attach to their complementary oligonucleotides on the c hip. This is because bases only pair with complementary bases. Adenine bonds with thymine, and cytosine bonds with guanine. The adjoining step is to analyze the reactions between the bases and determine the sequence of base pairs. This exit give a clear picture of the formerly unknown DNA. The biochip uses fluorescent fixture tags to determine where unknown fragments attach to their complementary strands on the chip. A microscope given to a computer reads the patterns of fluorescence and gives the sequences of the unknown strand. Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, consists of various sequences of four ingrained compounds called bases, and some proteins. Abbreviated, the initials of the bases are A, C, G, and T. The building blocks of all life, they encode thousands of genes. The... ...d over this chip, and the places where in that location are weak hybridizations, or base pair bonding, a slight bright tag would indicate a inherited mutation. One would be able to determine the exact place on that persons gene where the person has a genetic abnormality. An obvious use of the new technology exit be as the earliest possible screening method for cancer. all(a) genetic disorders could be tested for within a matter of minutes. With more advanced technology, such as what is happening with computer chips today, all genetic disorders could be checked for using but a single chip. new(prenominal) chips could be used to determine how tall a person is to grow, whether they depart bald earlier, or any number of applications. Obviously the technology depart also be used in animal studies. The only confinement to the advancement of this innovative new chip is the imagination.