Polymerase chain reaction has been listed as one of the good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
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There appears a concept called "Tm" in this article, but it is neither linked to an article with such title, or explained in this article itself. Please, define this term in its own article (and link to it), or define it here. Thank you. Pentalis 21 april 2:01 GMT -4:00 winter time.

It stands for melting temperature, often abbreviated Tm in calculations. Not sure why it is Tm rather than Mt, though capital T usually stands for temperature. CheekyMonkey 12:49, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

- Thank you very much, I also noticed you added the concept to the disambiguation page too, very kind of your part :-) Pentalis 6:25, 31 May 2005 (GMT -4:00 winter time)

In step 4 of figure 2 is not explained. How is the rest of the DNA past the primers truncated? All we see is a dotted line on the diagram suggesting it is cut somehow.

They don't get replicated, and hence drop out of significance entirely. (Among the millions of DNA molecules that eventually get made.) Its just a diagram to illustrate the concept, the actual reason is in the article. -- Natalinasmpf 13:27, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

CATTAGAT

There's a new program being released (under the GNU GPL) to perform primer specificity searches.

http://genome.cs.hi.is/cattagat/

If this looks useful to anyone then perhaps it can be added to the external links. I don't feel right doing it myself since I'm one of the authors of the software. - Haukurth 15:55, 21 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Har Gobind Khorana

I don't see how one can attribute the invention of PCR to Khorana. An invention (at least a patentable one) requires a reduction to practice, which he certainly never did. There is no reference cited for this either. In addition, the theromostabile polymerase was not known to Mullis at the time of his invention. Mullis got the Nobel Prize for the invention, not Khorana. I am therefore removing the attribution to Khorana.DonSiano 17:23, 22 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"PCR reaction"

Is it considered acceptable to use the phrase "PCR reaction" or is this considered redundant? The phrase appears a couple of times in this article. (RAS syndrome and the associated discussion page provide an interesting treatment of the issue; a Google search for "'PCR reaction' and 'RAS syndrome'" also reveals some interesting hits).--GregRM 15:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I try and remove the 'reaction' from the 'PCR reaction' whenever I can as it bugs me but maybe I'm just picky! I think it stems from the fact that acronyms such as PCR, ATM, CCTV and so on have become so commonplace it is no longer considered necessary to define them and so people lose sight of the actual meaning and consider the concept as a whole. Thus, when wanting to emphasise the fact that it is a reaction, the 'reaction' tagged onto the end. -luckyluke09

History of PCR

History of PCR A great review article. Also PCR Protocols, PCR Bioinformatics, and discussion are included.

Links to other PCR topics removed as they are not informative for standard PCR, and should be under Real-time or quantitative PCR. The History of PCR link is much more informative for PCR, yet was removed by [user:Alan Au] -- Bioinformin

Taq is not a polymerase that is used always

I disagree strongly with the phrase that Taq is used in current practice. Taq is with current standards a bad polymerase and it is not necesary to use Taq. Taq has no proofreading activity and its processivity is not as good as other polymerases, so it is my opinion that wikipedia should take an independent stance and not link PCR to Taq

I also made a very imortant change. It is not nucleotides that are used in the reaction but deoxynucleotides-triphosphate

Comment:

yes i completly agree to this. while taq polymerase certainly is the most famous and perhaps the one most used, it is far from the only one, nor is it one of the best polymerases available. an elucidation of the other available polymerases would be much appreciated. here assessing their properties, comparing price (relatively, not absolutely), areas of use. where it is appropriate to have a polymerase with high fidelity. 3' nucleases 5' nucleases. and so on and so forth.

thank you -broccolee

Bicycle or Car?

I was told that Mullis was driving his car and that he was going on vacation with his (first) wife and that he got the idea that he just had to try, so he turned the car around to the lab... Is the motorcycle source reliable?

elongation vs extension

i observe that one use the term elongation for the polymerase 'elongating' the primer along the dna strand. however the more correct term is extension. also elongation is used regarding protein synthesis.

the analogy is

melting-annealing-extension:PCR-cycle::intiation-elongation-termination:protein synthesis

i am fairly sure these terms are not used over one another. however you may know otherwise.

thats all.

micro-PCR

In my research on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices, I ran across some information on micro-PCR devices, which are fabricated with MEMS techniques. They consist of arrays of reaction chambers with electric heaters, and their construction allows them to do faster PCR with smaller sample sizes (both DNA and reagents). Does anybody else know the history of micro-PCR (sometimes denoted μPCR) that can help me add some stuff on this topic? Good article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6TFC-4CPM20J-1-1&_cdi=5223&_user=1238599&_orig=search&_coverDate=01%2F15%2F2005&_qd=1&_sk=999799992&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkWz&md5=ded7b4a9d79b6ef6bc883c7d08e00020&ie=/sdarticle.pdf

Could somebody please include Partial DNA match explanation in this article ?

I think partial DNA match is relevant topic to be included in this article. Could somebody please do that ? I need information about Partial DNA match interpretation. For example, it test is done on 13 alleles, and match is partial (on 10 of them), and reaction has not been succesful on 3 alleles: how should this be interpreted ? As far as I know, there are divided opinions in scientific community about this issue. Please help, this issue is important to me, and at the same time I think it is relevant to be included in this article, because it makes it more complete and understandable.

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