Absolutely necessary to diagnosing cancer, a prostate biopsy is not quite the cakewalk that some sources would have you believe. MSNBC.com's Mike Stuckey describes his experience.

In a biopsy, doctors take tissue samples for pathologists to examine, usually under a microscope. Biopsies are common in cancer screening but have other uses. Learn more here.

You’ll feel the biopsy site is cleaned with a sterile solution. You’ll be given local anesthesia once the sight is prepared. You’ll feel a small pinch when the local anesthesia is injected.

DNA was isolated from pinch biopsy material. The V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was PCR amplified for sequencing with region-specific barcoded primers 37 and sequenced on a MiSeq sequencer 23 ...