Clinical Management of Gene Expression

Abstract

The art of the molecular geneticist is no longer confined to the elegant but arcane domain of simple microbial genomes. Recombinant-DNA technology has rendered equally susceptible to his wizardry the several billion base pairs of DNA present in each human cell.Recent events have demonstrated the rapidity with which molecular genetics is achieving clinical relevance. For example, direct molecular analysis of DNA is now used as a diagnostic tool for the definitive antenatal detection of hemoglobinopathies,^{1 , 2} for investigating infections,^{3 , 4} and for classifying leukemias.⁵ Ley et al., in this issue of the Journal^,6 and Dover et al., in a recent . . .