A Demonstration Of The Polymerase Chain Reaction Technique In Class Teaching

Abstract

The application of PCR technique in genetic screening was demonstrated using the genetic materials from buccal cells of the students in the class. Two factors were taken into consideration when designing the experiments. The DNA region to be amplified should not be associated with any disease state. This is to eliminate any emotional and ethical problems associated with the experiments. In this practical, the presence and absence of a 38 bp sequence in the intron of COLIA2 gene were studied. The students were also shown on how to analyse the presence of homozygous and heterozygous alleles and the genetic variations that might be observed in the different ethnic grciups of students. Another factor was the time taken to complete the experiment. Our experience showed that this experiment would take at least six hours to obtain and analyse the results. It is therefore suitable to be used in class teaching.