Extraction Of Dna

1. Introduction

German biochemist Frederich Miescher first observed DNA in the late 1800s. But nearly a century passed from that discovery until researchers unraveled the structure of the DNAmolecule.
The importance of DNA became clear in 1953 thanks to the work of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. By studying X-ray diffraction patterns and building models.DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus,but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria.

The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T).Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for buildingand maintaining an organism.
DNA bases pair up with each other, A with T and C with G, to form units called base pairs. Each base is also attached to a sugar molecule and a phosphate molecule.Together, a base, sugar, and phosphate are called a nucleotide. Nucleotides are arranged in two long strands that form a spiral called a double helix.

The structure of the double helix is somewhat likea ladder, with the base pairs forming the ladder’s rungs and the sugar and phosphate molecules forming the vertical sidepieces of the ladder. This shape - which looks much like a twisted ladder -gives DNA the power to pass along biological instructions with great precision. DNA's unique structure enables the molecule to copy itself during cell division, this is critical when cells divide becauseeach new cell needs to have an exact copy of the DNA present in the old cell.

Extracting genetic material from plants has become an important part of modern mechanized agriculture. By extracting...