Invented by Kary Mullis
Mullis and Faloona, 1987. Specificsynthesis of DNA in vitro via apolymerase-catalyzed chain reaction.
Nobel Prize 1993
“I was working for Cetus, making oligonucleotides.They were heady times. Biotechnology was in flower and one spring night while the California buckeyes were also in flower I came across the polymerase chain reaction. I was driving with Jennifer Barnett to a cabin I had been building in northern California. She and I had worked and lived together for two years. She was an inspiration to me during that time as only a woman with brains, in the bloom of her womanhood, can be. That morning she had no idea what had just happened. I had an inkling. It was the first day of the rest of my life.”
- from Karry Mullis’s autobiography at the Nobel e-Museum
Specifically targets and amplifies a SINGLE sequence from within a complex mixture of DNA.
How is this different from cloning?
Takes advantage of basic requirements of replication
A DNA template
Nucleotides
Primers
polymerase
PCR is DNA replication in a test tube
Primers
Must have some information about sequence flanking your target
Primers provide specificity
