What is PCR?

ESR scientist Dr Brent Gilpin explains how polymerase chain reaction or PCR is able to identify specific bacteria.

Transcript

Dr Brent Gilpin PCR – polymerase chain reaction – is a way of amplifying up very small amounts of DNA very specifically. So we are able to, out of a background of millions of DNA sequences from thousands of different types of bacteria, use DNA primers to pull out just the DNA sequence from a specific organism or group of organisms.

Acknowledgements: TVNZ Television Archives