Give an account of artificial chromosomes in transfer of genetic material.

Explanation

Artificial chromosomes are synthetic chromo somes consisting of fragments of DNA integrated into a host chromosome. These artificial chromosomes are introduced into host cells to propagate and can be used to transfect other cells, introducing new DNA. Because these chromosomes are more useful in cloning larger fragments of DNA, it is easier and quicker to clone and transform genes. Artificial chromosomes vectors also make it easier to store through bacterial cells rather than mammalian cells.
There are two types of artificial chromosomes : Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) they are constructed from bacterial genomes and Yeast artificial chromosomes (YAC) are constructed from yeast genome. The construction of BAC is based on F-plasmid and it can accept DNA inserts of the range of 300-350 Kb. It is more stable than Yeast Artificial Chromosome. Although yeast artificial chromosomes can contain more base pairs (over one million) than bacterial artificial chromosomes, bacterial artificial chromosomes and are more common than yeast artificial chromosomes because they are more stable, making them easier to work with a smaller risk of rearrangement due to the circular shape of a plasmid.
YAC can accept large fragments of foreign DNA (upto 1 million base), it has centromeric and telomeric regions, ori site and selectable markers along with autonomously replication sequences. Both BAC and YAC are used as vectors for HGP (Human genome Project)