History Of Rflp
Of course, over time the way that DNA testing is carried out has advanced. New and faster machines have been developed (for instance the capillary and gel forms of electrophoresis) but through all of those drastic and exciting changes one process has remained the same; RFLP.
RFLP stands for Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism and it essentially involves taking a sample of DNA by cutting it and then analyzing the length of the DNA fragments within. Take two DNA samples, compare the lengths of both and if the match in a particular way then you can tell whether two people are related, or whether one person could potentially and successfully donate their bone marrow to another. This is one of the key processes used in paternity testing. 'Cutting' a DNA sample is a little more complex than it sounds. It must first be placed into restriction enzymes which work to cut at very specific places on the DNA sequence. Every piece of DNA contains 'short tandem repeats' (also known as VNTRs) which repeat the person's DNA sequence a specific number of times; a number which is dictated by that person's individual genetic makeup. Once the restriction enzyme has cut the DNA, it is placed into gel for electrophoresis, then dyed so that it can be analyzed by laboratory professionals.
Without the discovery and invention of the RFLP technique DNA testing would not be around today. It essentially takes the haystack of the human genome and finds the readable DNA sequence needle within. This process is used to test whether a donor is suitable for another person, whether one person is related to another and even whether a couple's child will suffer from a particular genetic condition. It's safe to say that this discovery is one of the most important and impressive in scientific history.