Molecular genetic testing for prenatal diagnosis.

In the past few decades, enormous progress has been made in the field of prenatal molecular genetic testing. Based on the inheritance patterns of the disease and type of mutation, prenatal diagnosis is possible using direct or indirect methods of detection. Although direct mutation analysis is highly accurate, accuracy of indirect mutation analysis depends on the distance of the DNA marker to the disease locus. In the past decade, the discovery of new concepts--such as atypical inheritance patterns due to UPD and imprinting and triplet repeat disorders--have helped to increase understanding of the molecular basis of these unusual genetic disorders. Prenatal diagnosis using a single cell from a blastomere is rapidly becoming routine in clinical practice. Noninvasive procedures to obtain fetal DNA for molecular testing also are progressing very rapidly. With the completion of the genome project, resources now are available for developing new technologies, such as microarrays (DNA chips), for accurate, simultaneous, mutation detection. The next few decades hold the promise of many more advances in genetic testing, drug discovery, and therapy.