Question
Suggest and describe a technique to obtain multiple copies of a gene of interest in vitro.
Solution
The technique to obtain multiple copies of a gene is PCR - Polymerase Chain rection.
It invoves the following steps.
Denaturing – The double-stranded template DNA is heated to separate it into two single strands.
Annealing – The temperature is lowered to enable the DNA primers to attach to the template DNA.
Extending – The temperature is raised and the new strand of DNA is made by the Taq polymerase enzyme.
These three stages are repeated 20-40 times, doubling the number of DNA copies each time.