Quel est le principe du PCR?

La «Polymerase Chain Reaction» ou PCR (ou encore ACP pour Amplification en Chaîne par Polymérase), est une technique de réplication ciblée in vitro. Elle permet d’obtenir, à partir d’un échantillon complexe et peu abondant, d’importantes quantités d’un fragment d’ADN spécifique et de longueur définie.

Qui a découvert la PCR?

Kary Mullis
Réaction en chaîne par polymérase/Inventeurs
En 1983, Kary Mullis, chercheur de la jeune firme de biotechnologie californienne Cetus, invente la polymerase chain reaction (PCR), une technique qui permet d’amplifier plusieurs millions de fois tout fragment d’ADN, pour peu qu’on connaisse la séquence de ses extrémités.

What are the unique properties of Taq polymerase?

Taq DNA polymerase is the most common enzyme used for PCR amplification. This enzyme is extremely heat resistant with a half-life of 40 minutes at 95°C. At its optimal temperature (72°C), nucleotides are incorporated at a rate of 2-4 kilobases per minute.

Where does Taq polymerase come from?

Taq DNA Polymerase comes from a bacteria, Thermus aquaticus , isolated from Yellowstone National Park’s Lower Geyser Basin in 1969. The enzyme copies DNA like other polymerases but likes working at high temperatures which would kill other DNA polymerases.

How does Taq polymerase know when to stop DNA synthesis?

It doesn’t know when to stop, so it keeps synthesizing DNA until the end of the ‘synthesis’ phase of the reaction, when the mixture is heated up to about 95 degrees C, the strands separate, and the Taq enzyme detatches. The mixture now contains long strands of DNA, which are likely to vastly exceed 123 bp in length.

How did Taq DNA polymerase acquire its name?

Taq polymerase. Taq polymerase is a thermostable DNA polymerase named after the thermophilic bacterium Thermus aquaticus from which it was originally isolated by Thomas D. Brock in 1965. It is often abbreviated to « Taq Pol », and is frequently used in polymerase chain reaction, a method for greatly amplifying short segments of DNA.