PCR Primed To Spur Chain Of Applications

What would you do if your research interests revolved around obtaining DNA from a bacterium preserved for millions of years in the gut of a bee stuck in amber, matching up a murderer to crime- scene blood half a century old, or cloning genes from a 1,000- year-old mummy? Most scientists would first consider PCR--the polymerase chain reaction--as a technique for approaching problems such as these. With PCR, minute quantities of nucleic acids can be amplified millions of times into sufficient qua

Written byHolly Ahern

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PCR technology, owned and licensed through Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company with United States headquarters in Nutley, N.J., is considered by many to be the most important development in the field of molecular biology since the discovery of restriction enzymes--the molecular "scissors" that selectively cut DNA--two decades ago. Hoffmann-La Roche, which includes Roche Diagnostic Systems Inc., purchased the patents and licensing rights from Cetus Corp. of Emeryville, Calif., in 1992.

PCR kit ISOLATION AID: Gentra Systems' Purescript kit allows researchers to isolate RNA from cells or tissues to be used for PCR.

"There are so many areas of molecular biology that have been impacted by PCR, notably in areas of basic research, where PCR is really moving things forward," agrees molecular biologist Nancy Casna, president of Therion Corp., a Troy, N.Y., laboratory that performs DNA-based tests to determine animal identity. "The tedious things that we all used to have to ...

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