New Lids on the Block

Thermal Cyclers

So much has changed in the last half-decade in the world of gene amplification. New breakthroughs and protocols have exceeded scientists' wildest expectations for applications of this essential technology. Is there a single life science lab in the country without a thermal cycler? From the high-end, ultrafast light-based cyclers to the tiny personal cyclers, there is a cycler to fit every need.

Way back in the early years of PCR, "doing an amplification" meant simply that--increasing the concentration of some target sequence of interest to use in insertion/
ligation reactions. Quickly enough, scientists developed new ways to use the cycler. Now PCR-based methods exist for every aspect of biology that relies on genetic information.

Forensic, genomic, and evolutionary studies have benefited greatly from the technique known as random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) PCR, which is used to fingerprint species from genomic DNA without prior sequence knowledge. Using arbitrary...