The applications of synthetic oligonucleotides to molecular biology

Over the last few years, the chemical synthesis of DNA in vitro has become a routine technique. The ready availability of synthetic DNA has revolutionized molecular biological research and has enabled new research approaches to be attempted that had not been possible previously. The most commonly used approaches can be divided into three broad areas: the cloning and manipulation of genes, the diagnosis of diseases by probing gene structure, and the specific in vitro mutagenesis of DNA for structure/function studies. In this review, each of these three areas is discussed through specific applications from published work. This review is not intended to be comprehensive either in its scope or in its documentation of published results. Rather, it is meant to present some of the most commonly used applications of oligonucleotides in molecular biology through representative examples.