The Biochip and Advancements in Medical Treatment Essay -- Exploratory

The Biochip and Advancements in Medical Treatment Advances in microchips occur daily, but a recent advance in the bea can nevertheless be called revolutionary. No, these atomic number 18 not a more advanced breed of thinly silicon wafers, better known as ready reckoner chips. They are called biochips. A blending of silicon technology with biology has produced a groundbreaking impudently technology. It can be use to tell how actively a cistron works, whether it carries any mutations, and even aid in the human genome project, a bulky term project to map the entire human genome. The biochip is a unbent of glass about the area of a dime. It is carpeted with deoxyribonucleic acid probes. The probes are oligonucleotides, strands of DNA six to nine bases long. A long strand of DNA of an secret sequence is to be tested to visualise its sequence. First, it is fragmented and hence washed over the chip. The fragments only attach to their complementary oligonucleotides on the chip. This is because bases only pair with complementary bases. Adenine bonds with thymine, and cytosine bonds with guanine. The next step is to canvas the reactions between the bases and determine the sequence of base pairs. This will give a clear picture of the formerly unknown DNA. The biochip uses fluorescent chases to determine where unknown fragments attach to their complementary strands on the chip. A microscope attached 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 organic 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 there are anaemic hybridizations, or base pair bonding, a less bright tag would indicate a inheritable mutation. One would be abl e to determine the exact place on that persons gene where the person has a genetic abnormality. An obvious use of the new technology will be as the earliest possible screening method for cancer. All genetic disorders could be tested for within a matter of minutes. With more advanced technology, much(prenominal) as what is happening with computer chips today, all genetic disorders could be suss out for using but a single chip. Other chips could be used to determine how tall a person is to grow, whether they will bald earlier, or any number of applications. Obviously the technology will also be used in animal studies. The only limitation to the advancement of this innovative new chip is the imagination.