Diagnostic molecular pathology in the twenty-first century

Diagnostic molecular pathology is expanding rapidly with the aid of the Human Genome Project and the development of potentially user-friendly molecular diagnostic methods. The diagnostic molecular pathology laboratory of the future must be prepared to purify DNA or RNA from a variety of sources and to investigate the sequence of the target genome of interest using automated amplification and hybridization detection systems. There will be a shift in the emphasis from phenotypic to genotypic diagnosis, and the diagnostic molecular pathology laboratory of the early twenty-first century will perform 5% to 10% of the volume of all laboratory testing.