Polymerase chain reaction description

Auroux et al. give an up-to-date description of the application of pTAS components and systems, including cell culture and cell handling, immunoassays, DNA separation and analysis, polymerase chain reactions, and sequencing [43] (see also [44] for a description of the pTAS components and systems). 

The rapid growth and popularity of RNAi as a research topic of interest and as a useful tool in the laboratory is evidenced by the tremendous yearly increase in publications on the subject since its initial description less than a decade ago. A current search of the scientific literature, using the terms RNAi and siRNA as keywords, reveals that over 10,000 articles have been published on the subject within the last 5 years, since the beginning of this century (Figure 7.6-1). This type of response to a technical discovery is wholly unprecedented and could only perhaps be reasonably compared with the explosion of significant and widespread advances that the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) [15-17] contributed to biological research and current biotechnology toward the end of the last century. 

Schnell S and Mendoza C (1997) Theoretical description of the polymerase chain reaction. Journal of Theoretical Biology 188(3) 313-318. 

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a means to amplify a given stretch of nucleotides to determine their relative concentration in different cell samples, or to produce usable quantities of a sequence of nucleotides for DNA cloning. The technique allows for the amplification of a few copies (in theory, only one copy is needed) of a specific piece of DNA into perhaps billions of copies in a relatively short time. The procedure is relatively inexpensive, requiring only a thermocycler and the appropriate enzymes and reagents for processing. The first description of PCR was published in 1985 (Saiki et al., 1985), and has proven to be such an important technique that the Nobel Prize in 1993 was awarded to Kary Banks MuUis for its discovery. 

The accuracy of Watson and Crick s description of how the DNA double helix unfolds to rephcate and self-assemble afterwards provided another exciting tool for bioinspired materials, namely a way of controlling self-assemblage. The possibility of controlhng the assembling and disassembling cycles of DNA molecules became a reality with the introduction of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) as a way to synthesize novel DNA molecules. With a very small amount of DNA, we are now able to replicate it billions of times in a machine called a thermocycler and use the synthetic DNA to transform living cells or to produce completely different materials. Kary Mulhs won the Nobel Prize of Chemistry in 1993 for the invention of PCR. 

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