cDNA

The acronyms refer to complementary DNA. A  sample of DNA can be amplified by PCR, but not a sample of RNA. To analyze the RNA it is needed to reverse transcription step using the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which produces a DNA molecule complementary to the RNA, thus the term cDNA. As the mRNA contains only the gene coding sequence, an important feature is that the cDNA contains no introns.

Dr. Juan Sabater-TobellaEuropean Specialist in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EC4)Member of the Pharmacogenomics Research NetworkPresidente de EUGENOMIC®