Robotic equipment and microsystem technology in biological research

Abstract

Each cell of a living organism contains the whole genetic information in form of DNA molecules. The size of the DNA from a single cell, or genome, of human beings is 3 × 109 nucleotide base pairs. Although the DNA information is usually identical in each cell there are several hundred different cell types. This is due to the fact that genetic information is read out from genes and transcribed from DNA into a cell-specific population of mRNA molecules, which itself can be further translated into different types of proteins. Every step of these cellular processes includes complex interactions of DNA, RNA and protein (Alberts, Bray et al., 1994). To understand these interaction mechanisms scientists started to decode the genetic information (Dulbecco, 1986). This task became finally a major goal of the Human Genome Project (Cantor, 1990).