A major advance in the 1980s was the development of technology to synthesize short oligonucleotides. This work both facilitated DNA sequencing and led to the advent of the development of PCR. Recently, rapid advances have occurred in the technology to chemically synthesize DNA, and sequences up to 10 kb are now readily produced. As this process becomes more economical, how will it affect the gene-cloning approaches outlined in this chapter? In other words, what types of techniques does this new technology have potential to supplant, and what techniques will not be affected by it?

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Hi, everyone. Let's look at the next question. It says, how has the recent rapid advancement in DNA synthesis technology allowing for the synthesis of sequences up to 10 kg bases potentially impacted the gene cloning approach. Choice A it has the potential to supplant traditional methods of gene cloning such as restriction enzyme digestion and ligation choice B. It has no impact on gene cloning approaches as it is not applicable to the techniques outlined in this chapter. Choice C. It has the potential to enhance gene cloning approaches by providing longer and more accurate DNA fragments for cloning or choice D. It has the potential to replace PC R in gene cloning approaches as it can directly synthesize full length genes. So let's think about what this advancement means and how this would have most impact on a gene cloning approach. So this advancement mainly focuses on being able to accurately synthesize larger DNA fragments. And when we talk about the impact on cloning, that means you would have fewer chances of errors or mutations when trying to clone a large piece of DNA. You'd have more jeans that could be cloned since there are plenty of very large genes out there that before were too large to be accurately synthesized. And that could include gene clusters. So of course, many genes have a lot of interaction with each other. The ability to synthesize accurately, very large pieces would allow you to even use whole clusters of genes. So when we look at our answer, choices, we can eliminate choice B having no impact because you still would use gene cloning techniques. You'd just be able to use larger DNA fragments. So that's going to point us to choice C. It has the potential to enhance gene cloning by providing longer and more accurate DNA fragments for cloning. That is indeed the biggest effect of this advance when we look at A and D uh potential to supplant restriction enzyme digestion and ligation. Well, that isn't going to be something it replaces since that's more about how you actually insert your gene sequence into a vector. So choice A is not our correct answer. And choice D potential to replace PC R and gene approaches. Well, again, it's not going to replace PC R, which you'll still do to make smaller DNA fragments. So choice D not our answer choice. We are looking at choice C, the potential to enhance those approaches by providing longer and more accurate DNA fragments for cloning. See you in the next video.

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Key Concepts

Oligonucleotide Synthesis

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)

Gene Cloning Techniques