Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an in vitro technique to synthesize large quantities of a given DNA molecule that separates the DNA into two complementary strands, uses a peltier heat pump to quickly heat and cool the DNA and uses the Taq polymerase for the synthesis of DNA. Taq is a bacterium that lives by volcanic sulfer jets at the bottom of the ocean where the temperature is very high. F...

To the Editor: Recently Muglia et al. [1] reported in your journal a nonisotopic detection of (CAG)n repeats in the Huntington disease (HD) gene. We have read this article with great interest, as we use a similar method for the detection of the above [2, 3]. There are many difficulties in the PCR conditions of examining CAG repeats in the HD gene and in the detection of PCR products on nondenat...

The cloning of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products provides one with a stable form of the amplified segment and facilitates further manipulation and study of the target molecule. A number of cloning protocols have been developed either based on a restriction endonuclease recognition site built into the primers or by using the template-independent terminal transferase activity (“extendase” ...

The sequence-specific recognitions between DNA and proteins are playing important roles in many biological functions. The double-stranded DNA microarrays (dsDNA microarrays) can be used to study the sequence-specific recognitions between DNAs and proteins in highly parallel way. In this paper, two different elongation processes in forming dsDNA from the immobilized oligonucleotides have been co...

Detection of rare mutant alleles in an excess of wild type alleles is increasingly important in cancer diagnosis. Several methods for selective amplification of a mutant allele via the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have been reported, but each of these methods has its own limitations. A common problem is that Taq DNA polymerase errors early during amplification generate false positive mutatio...