PCR

Ever wonder what those actors and actresses on the hit show CSI are doing in the laboratory with the DNA they find? One of the first steps in using DNA to solve crimes is to perform the polymerase chain reaction otherwise known as PCR. Polymerase chain reaction or PCR is a laboratory technique used to amplify a piece of DNA. The double stranded DNA is denatured by using heat. A pcr primer complemetary to the single strand of DNA is then used as the starting piont of the replicated piece of DNA. PCR primers along with an enzyme known as taq polymerase are essential for the amplification process. Taq polymerase then uses nucleotides in solution to create the new strand of DNA. The pcr product is a solution of millions of copies of the original DNA sequence. PCR is a very sensitive technique making it imperative to follow the pcr protocol. There are variations of PCR such as quantitative pcr. Quantitaive PCR is used to measure the quantity of pcr product produced. Quantitative pcr is sometimes abbreviated as qrt-pcr (short for quantitative real-time pcr) however this is incorrect and is often confused with RT-PCR or reverse transcriptase pcr. Companies like Promega, Labnet, and Labconco supply products used in the polymerase chain reaction.