PCR.





Hello everyone, Today I'm going to talk about a very important technique 'Polymerase Chain reaction' or PCR, it is used to amplify a copy of a segment of DNA in order to generate millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence. It was developed in 1963 by Kary Mullis.
Resultado de imagen para kary mullis pcr
Kary Mullis.

It has a huge importance in my career because this technique allows you to do research in many fields related to genes and ADN. For instance, some of its applications are gene cloning and manipulation, gene mutagenesis, construction of DNA-based phylogenies, diagnosis and monitoring of hereditary diseases. As you see you can work with this technique doing research on evolution, diseases, biotechnology etc.

I chose this technique because I have always loved proteins, enzymes and all related to DNA; and this technique is based on a very important enzyme, The ''Polymerase''; the technique consists of a series of repeated temperature changes, first the temperature is raised up to 95°C to separate the DNA chains, then the temperature is lowered to 60°c to join the primers (sequences of nucleic acid that are used as a starting point of the replication) and finally the polymerase (72°C) read the primers and synthesize new chains of the particular DNA sequence. It is and interesting fact that the enzyme used in this process comes from an extremophile bacterium, so it can resist high temperatures.
Resultado de imagen para PCR
PCR procedure. 
Resultado de imagen para PCR machine in use
PCR machine.

I learned about this technique at school in 4th high grade because we had a Unit of Biotechnology, I was so interested in it so it was quite fun learning about it. I think that a possible future use that it might have is to discover the cause of new infectious diseases and probably cure some genetic diseases.

It has a great impact on human welfare because as I said, it has various applications and one of them is in the clinical area, so with this technique, we can diagnosis hereditary diseases early and thy to treat them. Finally, In my opinion, this technique has a lot of advantages because it is cheap, easy to understand and to use,  reliable and it does not take that long. Although it may have some disadvantages as well because it's probably that the polymerase makes a mistake while synthesizing the chains or the primer may not bind in the right part so it would produce a wrong synthesis of the DNA sequence.


Comments

  1. Andrea Flores Abarca27 June 2017 at 14:16

    PCR has revolutionised the world! It's amazing the uncountable thing that benefice of it.

    ReplyDelete

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