Polymerase Chain Reactions
Polymerase Chain Reaction is still by far the most popular nucleic acid amplification technique, despite the description of other methods. A fundamental biochemical method known as the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is used to exponentially amplify target sequences from a DNA template. Thermal cycling is a technique that achieves this by repeatedly heating and cooling a solution containing DNA in order to melt the DNA, anneal short DNA fragments known as primers (typically synthetic oligonucleotides), and enzymatically replicate the primer-bound sequences using temperature-dependent DNA polymerases like Taq polymerase. PCR is a common tool in a geneticist's toolbox and has a wide range of uses.
