Why is The Detection of DNA Sequences Important?

Now that sequencing of the human genome is finished [1, 2], much information on the underlying genetic causes of many inherited and acquired diseases has been made available. Many genetic diseases have been found to be the result of a change of a single base pair. These alterations, termed single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), may cause changes in the amino acid sequence of important proteins. Some SNPs on the other hand may not cause a change in protein expression but may be close on the chromosome to other unknown deleterious mutations and can thus serve as genetic markers for these.