What Is Dna Fingerprinting

Dna Fingerprinting is a method of estimating the likelihood that genetic material came from a particular individual or group. It's know for a fact that 99% of human DNA is identical between individuals, but the 1% that differs enables scientists to distinguish identity as it's absolutely random from one person to another. This 1% allows them to use DNA fingerprinting as a means of identification. The DNA alphabet consists of four building blocks - A, C, T and G, called base pairs, which are linked toegether in long chains, but there are also 'junk DNA' that's not translated into useful proteins.

DNA fingerprinting has definitely become an indispensible part of our society, helping to prove innocence or guilt in criminal cases, resolving immigration arguments and clarifying paternity. DNA fingerpirnts are entered into a datatabase and currently, USA maintains the largest database with over 6 million records as of 2008.

Professor Jeffreys is the inventor of DNA fingerprinting and he started his research back in the late 1970s in the University of Leicester. Here is how he explains his discovery: "We'd got to the point where we could detect single copies of human genes - which led to one of the first observations of introns [non-coding sections of DNA that split up genes]. But when I came to Leicester in 1977, I wanted to move away from the study of split genes, and to marry the new techniques of molecular biology with human genetics. The true story of DNA fingerprinting starts at the headquarters of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. I collected a big lump of seal meat from their lock-up freezer and, to cut a long story short, we got the seal myoglobin gene, had a look at human myoglobin gene and there, inside an intron in that gene was tandem repeat DNA - a minisatellite."

Each person's DNA is as unique as a fingerprint. DNA fingerprinting is used to identify rapists and other criminals, determine paternity (who the father of the child really is), determine whether a hopeful immigrant is really a close relative of already established residents. The more probes you use, the more confident you can be that you have gotten the right man. The advantage over the old-fashion finger-printing is that DNA can be isolated from any part of the body,skin cells, blood or blood stains or semen. But DNA fingerprinting also has medical applications as it is often used to track down the genetic basis of inherited diseases.