1. Meet Kary Mullis, inventor of the PCR
“Sometimes a good idea comes
to you when you are not looking
for it. Through an improbable
combination of coincidences,
naïveté, and luck mistakes, such
a revelation came to me one
Friday night in April, 1983, as I
gripped the steering wheel of
my car and snaked along a
moonlit mountain road into
northern California’s redwood
country.” Sci. Am. 1990 262:56-61, 64-5.
5. What you will do in lab next week:
Component Volume (L)
10X PCR buffer 5
MgCl2 2
dNTPs 1
Forward primer 1
Reverse primer 1
Template DNA* 1
Pfx Polymerase 0.5
Sterile dH2O 38.5
*During the first part of next week’s lab you will be
purifying genomic DNA from E. coli K-12.
6. Typical program, similar to the one that you will run:
1) 94°C for 2 min.
2) 94°C for 15 sec.
3) 55°C for 30 sec.
4) 68°C for 1.0 min per kb of amplified template*
5) Go to step 2 for 25 – 35 cycles
6) 68°C for 5 min. (may not do this step)
7) 4°C
8) End cycle
*How many kb in the adhP gene?
7. Anatomy of a PCR Reaction
Denaturation Step
-Usually: 45 sec – 1 min at 94 °C
Primer Annealing Step (critical)
-Optimal if done at ~ 3 – 5 °C below Tm. Often is
done using temperature gradient, when several PCR
rxns are done in parallel at increasing temperatures.
Elongation Step
-The buffer is optimal for polymerase
-Depending on polymerase, 1 – 2 min for every kb of
synthesized DNA at 72 – 76 ° C. For Pfx
polymerase, 1 min/kb at 68 – 74 °C is optimal
8. Zen and the Art of Choosing the
Goldilocks Annealing Temperature
(Williamson and Rybicki, 1991: J Med Virol 33: 165-171).
http://www.mcb.uct.ac.za/pcroptim.htm
9. How long should a primer be?
Statistically, a unique, 16-bp sequence will appear
once in how many base pairs?
10. Primer Design: Some Guidelines
1) Primers should be ~18 – 22 bp long
2) Should have similar Tms, in the range of 52 – 65 °C
3) They should have ~40 – 60% GC content
4) Should have a “GC” clamp
5) Should have minimal secondary structure
6) Should have minimal repeats – e.g., ATATATAT
7) Should have minimal runs (no more than four) of
any one base
http://www.premierbiosoft.com/tech_notes/PCR_Primer_Design.html
12. One formula (among many) for estimating the Tm
of primers
Tm = 4(G + C) + 2(A + T) °C
Using the above formula, what is the Tm for the
following primer?
5 -CACCATGGCGTATTGCAATCCGG-3
http://www.mcb.uct.ac.za/pcroptim.htm
13. Which thermostable DNA polymerase should I use?
You will be using Platinum Pfx, which is claimed to
have a higher fidelity than Pfu.
15. But, from the Invitrogen
website we have the
following comparison:
http://www.invitrogen.com/site/us/en/home/Products-and-Services/Applications/Nucleic-Acid-Amplification-