Molecular Biological Analyses and Molecular Pathology in Clinical Chemistry

Abstract

The introduction of powerful methods for the analysis of nucleic acids started a revolution in medicine, opening up a new field of molecular diagnosis. The core technologies of molecular diagnosis involve techniques for the amplification and characterization of nucleic acids. These techniques have enabled the diagnosis of many diseases with unprecedented sensitivity and specificity. As research tools, these methods have increased our understanding of many diseases on a molecular level, with the unraveling of the molecular pathology of many common disorders. The foundation for the rapid and continual development of molecular pathology received a boost from the genome‐wide scale analyses of the human genome, such as the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the HapMap Project, which have provided the essential genetic blueprint for future investigations.