Introduction to DNA Fingerprinting

Forensic science is defined as the intersection of law and medicine.

Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) is used to separate DNA fragments by size.

DNA profiling involves only two stages: DNA extraction and DNA cutting.

Gel electrophoresis is used to mix DNA samples in a single well.

DNA fingerprinting was first developed in 1980.

Restriction enzymes are used to combine DNA fragments.

PCR is used to amplify segments of RNA.

The thermal cycler repeats the denaturing, annealing, and elongating temperatures approximately 30 times.

PCR amplification is logarithmic, meaning the number of copies of the target is doubled every cycle.

Taq DNA polymerase attaches nucleotides to the growing strand of DNA, not primers to the template DNA.

PCR is used in forensic science to analyze DNA evidence, not to diagnose diseases.

DNA primers are short pieces of single-stranded DNA that flank the target region to be amplified, not long pieces of double-stranded DNA.