The Polymerase Chain Reaction

James D. Watson When, in late March of 1953, Francis Crick and I came to write the first Nature paper describing the double helical structure of the DNA molecule, Francis had wanted to include a lengthy discussion of the genetic implications of a molecule whose struc ture we had divined from a minimum of experimental data and on theoretical argu ments based on physical principles. But I felt that this might be tempting fate, given that we had not yet seen the detailed evidence from King's College. Nevertheless, we reached a compromise and decided to include a sentence that pointed to the biological significance of the molecule's key feature-the complementary pairing of the bases. "It has not escaped our notice," Francis wrote, "that the specific pairing that we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." By May, when we were writing the second Nature paper, I was more confident that the proposed structure was at the very least substantially correct, so that this second paper contains a discussion of molecular self-duplication using templates or molds. We pointed out that, as a consequence of base pairing, a DNA molecule has two chains that are complementary to each other. Each chain could then act ". . . as a template for the formation on itself of a new companion chain, so that eventually we shall have two pairs of chains, where we only had one before" and, moreover, " ...

This PCR handbook establishes an easy approach for the students going through their studies in Molecular Diagnostics. It introduces timely topics such as Clinical Applications of PCR, Real time PCR, PCR Optimization, Application of PCR, PCR Array System Performance, Designing the primers, PCR in diagnosis of diseases and different PCR Techniques and their procedures.

PCR, developed at Cetus Corporation/USA by Henry A. Erlich, Kary Mullis and Randall K. Saiki, is a very simple method for amplifying nucleic acids in vitro. The realization of this idea bases on the repetition of a set of three different temperatures and yields an increase of the target structure up to a factor of 106 to 1012. Therefore, this technique is predisposed for safe analysis and characterization of DNA and RNA sequences of interest, even where the starting amount of material is enormously small. Because of its sensitivity, speed and versatility this method is particularly suitable for investigations of oncogenes, tumor associated translocations, retroviral sequences, lymphokines and mainly the broad field of degenerative and inflammatory diseases of nervous system. PCR seems to be the technique which could overcome the two most important problems in that field: very small amount of material combined with the necessity of rapid diagnostic procedures in inflammatory infections. "PCR topics" will give an actual overview of basic and applied research fields on usage of polymerase chain reaction. All contributions to this book have been presented at an international congress on "Usage of Polymerase chain reaction in genetic and infectious diseases" which took place in june 1990 in Berlin. The editors wish to thank all participants for their contributions. We offer our thanks and gratitude to our coworkers and especially to our technical assistents Barbara Trampenau, Mirjana Wiirdemann and Hannelore Leonhard.

The author presents a basic introduction to the world of genetic engineering. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Polymerase Chain Reaction

Notable practitioners describe how laboratory medicine is practiced today and illuminate how it will function tomorrow as the revolutionary advances afforded by molecular diagnostics become increasingly central to effective analysis. Proceeding from a discussion of elementary nucleic acid technology to a review of the more advanced techniques, the distinguished contributors lay the groundwork for a comprehensive understanding of their applications throughout clinical medicine. The result is a detailed description of those molecular technologies currently used in diagnostic laboratories, as well as those that seem particularly promising. Detailed discussions of specific clinical applications include those for cancer, hematological malignancies, cardiovascular disease, and neuromuscular, endocrine, and infectious diseases.

This indispensable manual is a compilation of review articles written by experts in the field of PCR technology. It is a recommended purchase for all microbiology and molecular biology laboratories and university libraries.