MeSH

In vitro method for producing large amounts of specific DNA or RNA fragments of defined length and sequence from small amounts of short oligonucleotide flanking sequences (primers). The essential steps include thermal denaturation of the double-stranded target molecules, annealing of the primers to their complementary sequences, and extension of the annealed primers by enzymatic synthesis with DNA polymerase. The reaction is efficient, specific, and extremely sensitive. Uses for the reaction include disease diagnosis, detection of difficult-to-isolate pathogens, mutation analysis, genetic testing, DNA sequencing, and analyzing evolutionary relationships.

Year introduced: 1991(1990)

Methods used for detecting the amplified DNA products from the polymerase chain reaction as they accumulate instead of at the end of the reaction.

Year introduced: 2012

Methods for using more than one primer set in a polymerase chain reaction to amplify more than one segment of the target DNA sequence in a single reaction.

Year introduced: 2012

A variation of the PCR technique in which cDNA is made from RNA via reverse transcription. The resultant cDNA is then amplified using standard PCR protocols.

Year introduced: 1999