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2 

ASSOCIATION FOR MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY v. 
MYRIAD GENETICS, INC.
 
Opinion of the Court 

the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 

I 

A 

Genes  form  the  basis  for  hereditary  traits  in  living
organisms.  See  generally  Association  for  Molecular  Pa-
thology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, 702 
F. Supp.  2d  181,  192–211  (SDNY  2010).    The  human  ge-
nome  consists  of  approximately  22,000  genes  packed  into
23  pairs  of  chromosomes.  Each  gene  is  encoded  as  DNA,
which  takes  the  shape  of  the  familiar  “double  helix” 
that  Doctors  James  Watson  and  Francis  Crick  first  de-
scribed  in  1953.    Each  “cross-bar”  in  the  DNA  helix  con-
sists  of  two  chemically  joined  nucleotides.    The  possible
nucleotides are adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and
guanine  (G),  each  of  which  binds  naturally  with  another 
nucleotide: A pairs with T; C pairs with G.  The nucleotide 
cross-bars  are  chemically  connected  to  a  sugar-phosphate 
backbone  that  forms  the  outside  framework  of  the  DNA 
helix.  Sequences  of  DNA  nucleotides  contain  the  infor-
mation  necessary  to  create  strings  of  amino  acids,  which 
in turn are used in the body to build proteins.  Only some
DNA  nucleotides,  however,  code  for  amino  acids;  these 
nucleotides are known as “exons.”  Nucleotides that do not 
code for amino acids, in contrast, are known as “introns.” 

Creation  of  proteins  from  DNA  involves  two  principal
steps,  known  as  transcription  and  translation.    In  tran-
scription,  the  bonds  between  DNA  nucleotides  separate,
and  the  DNA  helix  unwinds  into  two  single  strands.  A 
single strand is used as a template to create a complemen-
tary ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand.  The nucleotides on the 
DNA  strand  pair  naturally  with  their  counterparts,  with
the exception that RNA uses the nucleotide base uracil (U) 
instead  of  thymine  (T).  Transcription  results  in  a  single
strand  RNA  molecule,  known  as  pre-RNA,  whose  nucleo-
tides form an inverse image of the DNA strand from which