ABSTRACT
Classic references on the history of the development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), for which K. B. Mullis won the Nobel Prize, and on the enzymology of PCR are summarized by Atlas and Bej (1994). PCR may be summarized as follows (Atlas and Bej, 1994):
The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an in vitro method for replication of a defined target DNA sequence so that its amount is increased exponentially. Whereas previously only minute amounts of a specific gene could be obtained from a cell, now even a single gene copy can be amplified to a million copies within a few hours by PCR.
