Question

What are the drawbacks of PCR?

Answer 1

Polymerase Chain Reaction:

1. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a laboratory technique for rapidly synthesizing (amplifying) millions to billions of copies of a single gene fragment, which may then be researched in greater depth.
2. PCR includes choosing a portion of the genome to be amplified using short synthetic DNA fragments called primers, followed by several rounds of DNA synthesis to amplify that segment.

Drawbacks of PCR:

1. The specificity of the PCR product generated can be changed by the non-specific binding of primers to other sequences on the template DNA.
2. The DNA polymerase utilized in the PCR reaction is prone to mistakes, which could result in a mutation in the fragment produced.
3. Some prior sequence information is often required in order to construct primers for the production of the PCR product.