Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Myriad Decision and cDNA

The Supreme Court states:

They can also synthetically create exons-only strands of nucleotides known as composite DNA (cDNA). cDNA contains only the exons that occur in DNA, omitting the intervening introns.

As NCI states:

The next step is to convert the mRNA back into a DNA molecule in the test tube. This can be thought of simply as reversing what went on in the cell when the gene DNA was switched on and mRNA was made by base pairing. This is a two-stage process. First, each mRNA is copied into a new DNA strand using base pairing to form a mRNA-DNA duplex. Next, the mRNA is chopped up and removed, and the DNA strand is used to make a second DNA strand. This double-stranded DNA is called complementary DNA or cDNA. Thus, each cDNA in the test tube originally came from a specific mRNA in the cell.

But in the MIT cDNA course they call it complementary DNA, NOT "composite DNA (sic)" Even Wikipedia uses that term. It is amazing this is on page 1 they make this massive fundamental mistake. Any AP Biology High School student knows this. One wonders who crafted this document.Perhaps that is what is wrong with our Government.