The development and implementation of molecular biology techniques have had a major impact in both basic and applied biological research. Since its inception in the early 1950s, molecular biology has matured as a science. In the last 10 years many of the tedious, repetitive techniques have been automated; timeconsuming multistep procedures have been converted into kits; high quality genomic and cDNA libraries are now commercially available, and improvements in the quality of reagents and enzymes have immensely benefited all nucleic acid manipulations.