Transkaryotic other research news
TKT has developed a way to pinpoint genes that is 10 to 100 times faster than existing methods, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Called recombination walking, the technology programs yeast cells to localize genes on human chromosomes. According to the company, the method uses the phenomenon of homologous recombination, which allows engineered yeast cells to pick out and align sets of related DNA sequences.
To find specific, disease-causing genes, recombination walking is being used to get from markers, linked to a particular gene, to the gene itself. Yeast artificial chromosomes have allowed scientists to take longer steps in the walking process, that is, to propagate fragments of DNA that are 100-2,000 kilobases long, as compared to the 15-45 kb stretches propagated by bacteriophage cloning. TKT scientists now report that they can execute multiple steps in parallel, thereby speeding the yeast-based sequencing technology. ...