Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Department of
PCR: Replicating success
Date of this Version
5-12-2005
Abstract
PCR often gets taken for granted, but there are ways of making it faster, more accurate and easier to perform. Pete Moore investigates. As a means of rapidly copying a selected template sequence from a DNA mixture in vitro, PCR by itself and in combination with other techniques has found a vast range of applications. These range from sequence detection and isolation for research, forensics and species identification to detecting mutations and polymorphisms and amplifying RNA-derived cDNAs for microarray analysis of gene expression. As well as standard PCR, the technique now comes in the form of real-time quantitative PCR (real-time PCR or qPCR). This uses fluorescent probes to monitor the amount of product at the end of each cycle, and real-time PCR machines look for the cycle at which they can first detect fluorescence. This relates to the number of copies of original template — the greater the number of starting copies, the fewer cycles are needed to reach fluorescence detection.
Comments
This article was published in Nature 435, 235-238 (12 May 2005) | doi: 10.1038/435235a Visit Nature for the full article