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42 Mercer L. Rev. 1099 (1990-1991)
DNA Fingerprinting: A Scientific Perspective

handle is hein.journals/mercer42 and id is 1103 raw text is: DNA Fingerprinting: A Scientific Perspective by Linda R. Adkison* I. INTRODUCTION The birth of genetics in the 1860s occurred in a solitary monastery by a humble monk, Gregor Johann Mendel, who performed unprecedented ex- periments with garden peas.' The rebirth of his work at the turn of the century has slowly led to an intermingling of various physical, chemical, and biological sciences. This process, in turn, is continually yielding an understanding of how characteristics are inherited, combined, assorted, and reassorted through generation after generation. The common thread connecting these divergent, yet convergent, disciplines is the remarkable double stranded helix, described by James D. Watson and Maurice H.F. Crick and known as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).2 The basic structure of DNA is a double helix bound by hydrogen bonds and composed of four subunits called nucleotides or bases. These are ade- nine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G).s It is the redun- dancy of the A-T-C-G code which defines uniqueness. The human gen- ome (diploid) consists of approximately 6.6 billion base pairs (bp), sufficient to encode an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 proteins. With the exception of identical twins, the DNA molecule in every per- son, those who have lived and those living, is unique. As unique as life is, this uniqueness has not always been easy to demonstrate. Only with the * Assistant Professor of Genetics, Mercer University School of Medicine. Georgia South- ern University (B.A., 1973); Georgia State University (M.S., 1977); Texas A & M University (Ph.D., 1986); The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine (Post Doctoral Fellowship 1986- 1989). 1. See generaly F. PORTUGAL & J. COHEN, A CENTURY OF DNA: A HISTORY OF THE DIs- COVERY OF THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF, THE GENETIC SUBSTANCE 109-16 (1977). 2. Watson & Crick, Genetical Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid, 171 NATURE 964 (1953). 3. Kelly, Rankin & Wink, Method and Applications of DNA Fingerprinting: A Guide for the Non-Scientist, CRIM. L. REv. 105, 106 (1987)., 1099

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