Molecular biology techniques for research development. A literature review

Abstract

Introduction: Epidemiology, from the etymological point of view, means "science that studies diseases that affect the communities". It has been developing through centuries, describing and explaining the dynamics of population health; it has integrated new branches such as molecular epidemiology, which is defined as a discipline in which molecular techniques are implemented for clinical, research, and scientific contributions.
Objective: To present techniques with basis in molecular biology, which have contributed to the research development.
Material and methods:A review of scientific articles was made during the months of August-October 2016, and July-September, 2017 in English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish languages.  A search for information in scientific journals such as Pubmed, Scielo, Biomed Central, Free Medical Journals, LILACS, Redalyc, Inbiomed, and Dialnet was also made using DeCs term descriptors of Health Sciences, and the MeSH descriptor; articles published during the time period from 2012-2017 were used; and publications of previous years were also taken into consideration as a contribution to the history of this topic.
Results: Five techniques of molecular biology which have contributed to research development were presented: PCR, sequencing, hybridization with DNA probes, RAPD, and RFLP.
Conclusions: At present, the use of molecular techniques allows the complete genome study or short and long DNA sequencings with the aim of detecting and analyzing sequences of interest for research in agronomy and forensic sciences; clinical diagnosis and basic, traslational, and applied research; each of them characterized by reliability and quickness in obtaining result, strength, specificity, sensitivity, and flexibility, compared to phenotypic methods.

Keywords: Epidemiology, polymerase chain reaction, Hybridization, Sequencing, RAPD, RFLP.