Primers are here

This is great news! Once the respiration portion is finished, hopefully by tomorrow, we can finally begin working on the bacterial DNA. Now we have all the equipment to find out what microbes we have in the soil.

The primers are pieces of DNA oglionuclueotides (don't worry, I didn't know what they were either), which basically tell the DNA polymerase in the PCR machine what pieces of DNA it should replicate and amplify.

1. Heat to nearly 100 C denatures the DNA by breaking the bonds holding the double strands together, and the DNA unravels.

2. The DNA is cooled to about 60 C and the primers latch on to their corresponding sequences in the denatured DNA.

3. The taq polymerase (DNA synthesizing protein found in hot springs bacteria) attaches to these bonded strands and rebuilds them into two strands. The temperature here is about 75-80 C

4. Repeat until the DNA has been sufficiently amplified. The reason behind the bacterial polymerase is that it can withstand the temperature cycling required to break the DNA strands apart. Normal human polymerase would break down at such high temperatures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction

Can't wait for it!