Molecular Conservation Technologies For Germplasm Conservation

Abstract

Molecular biology provides a scientific framework that describes the elements of the genetic system as sequences of four nucleotide bases that make up DNA. Knowledge of how these DNA sequences are expressed and how expression is regulated and coordinated during development is growing rapidly. It is now commonplace to introduce foreign gene constructs into an organism, and the ability to add regulatory sequences that determine when and how strongly the introduced genes will be expressed to alter the phenotype of the recipient is often possible. The numbers of genes that have been isolated,cloned, and sequenced increase daily, and the information thus obtained already represents a genetic resource of considerable and growing scientific and commercial value.