Q. WHAT IS PCR (POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION)?

A. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a laboratory technique used for copying and replicating a piece of DNA unique to a targeted pathogen using select reagents.

With each step of the reaction, the number of DNA molecules increases exponentially and in just a few hours of running the reaction, hundreds of thousands to millions of copies of the target DNA can be made and easily detected. PCR has therefore become an important tool in the rapid diagnosis of infectious disease