Exemplar Problems

Question:

Describe the stages involved in a PCR cycle. What happens during denaturation, annealing, and extension?

Answer:

In a PCR cycle, there are three stages: denaturation, annealing, and extension. During denaturation, DNA is heated to a high temperature, causing double-stranded DNA to separate into two single strands. Annealing involves lowering the temperature to allow primers to bind to complementary sequences on the template DNA. Extension occurs at a slightly higher temperature, where DNA polymerase synthesizes new DNA strands by extending from the primers.