Polymerase Chain
Reaction (PCR)
Method
Strand Separation – heated to 95⁰C to break hydrogen bonds and denature DNA strands
Primer Binding – rapidly cooled to 50-55⁰C to anneal primers to complementary sites in
target DNA
Strand Synthesis – heated to 72⁰C to allow Taq DNA polymerase (thermostable DNA
polymerase) to work at optimum temperature and copy both strands of target DNA
Process repeated about 25 times and amount doubles with each cycle
Produce large quantities of DNA from a small sample
Large quantities are needed for effective analysis
Reaction (PCR)
Method
Strand Separation – heated to 95⁰C to break hydrogen bonds and denature DNA strands
Primer Binding – rapidly cooled to 50-55⁰C to anneal primers to complementary sites in
target DNA
Strand Synthesis – heated to 72⁰C to allow Taq DNA polymerase (thermostable DNA
polymerase) to work at optimum temperature and copy both strands of target DNA
Process repeated about 25 times and amount doubles with each cycle
Produce large quantities of DNA from a small sample
Large quantities are needed for effective analysis
