Polymerase Chain Reaction Developed in 1983 by Kary Mullis and he won the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1993 PCR Or Making lots of copies of a piece of DNA when you only find a little bit of it at the crime scene.

Taq Polymerase Polymerase is and enzyme that Copies DNA Taq polymerase comes from a bacterium (Thermus aquaticus)that lives in hot springs. It won’t denature under high temperatures. It can replicate a 1000 base pair strand of DNA in less than 10 seconds at 72 °C At it’s optimal temp. it can replicate 150 b.p. per sec.

What happens when you heat and cool DNA When you heat DNA the two strands pull apart When you cool DNA the two strands stick together again. Thermal cycling is what makes PCR go fast

What raw materials do you need? Short strand of DNA (you only want the part you are going to use for fingerprint analysis) Primers to locate the part of DNA you want and to start the replication. Free floating nucleotides. Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, Guanine Taq Polymerase

Thermal cycling With all of these ingredients mixed together Denaturing Heat DNA and it separates. Anealing The Primers attach to the sequence you want to copy Proliferation The Taq polymerase attaches and lines up the complementary base pairs. Cool DNA reattaches and we have 4 strands. After 3 cycles you have your target piece of DNA Repeat thermal cycling and DNA Amplifies exponentially. (2 strands  416 32 64 120 etc)

Here are some videos