Written by: The Midland Certified Reagent Company
Summary: Purified oligos offer scientists the chance to work on groundbreaking research.
Since the 1970s, scientists have had the ability to synthesize DNA molecules to be used for experimentation. Originally, this process was quite time consuming and produced entire polymers of DNA or RNA. Polymers can be useful, but not if scientists only want to study a specific sequence. Synthesizing purified oligos are a much more cost-effective approach.
Recreating Conditions in a Lab
Researchers must be able to recreate extremely precise conditions in a laboratory setting in order to test theories they may have about how a virus works. It can be time consuming and costly to find live test subjects, and in some cases quite illegal. Laboratories rely on synthetic DNA in order to create a strand they can use to study something. Recreating these conditions using something like PAGE purification has an extremely high chance of yielding a pure product, which makes for a high quality test sample to work with. This kind of oligo is useful when studying gene therapy or cloning.
Alternatively, HPLC purification is useful for creating a specific oligo that has certain modifications to it. The advantage is the higher yield, which makes HPLC perfect for research organizations looking to reduce costs.
Balancing Costs
Almost all of a pharmaceutical company’s budget can easily go toward research and development. That money pays for personnel and acquiring equipment used in testing. Even universities, which receive endowments for scientific practices, struggle to perform cutting edge research within the constraints of their budgets. Synthetic DNA has presented modern science with a cost-effective approach to this important research.