DNA synthesis is the natural or artificial creation of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules. In nature, such molecules are created by all living cells through the process of DNA replication, with replication initiator proteins splitting the existing DNA of the cell and making a copy of each split segment, with the copied segments then being joined together into a new DNA molecule. Various means also exist to artificially stimulate the replication of naturally occurring DNA, or to create artificial gene sequences. A polymerase chain reaction is a form of enzymatic DNA synthesis, using cycles of repeated heating and cooling of the reaction for DNA melting and enzymatic replication of the DNA. Artificial gene synthesis is the process of synthesizing a gene in vitro without the need for initial template DNA samples. The main method is currently by oligonucleotide synthesis (also used for other applications) from digital genetic sequences and subsequent annealing of the resultant fragments.
Famous quotes containing the words dna and/or synthesis:
“Here [in London, history] ... seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single growth of stone and brick, uncounted strata of message and meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)