Parallel DNA polymerase chain reaction

What is it about?

Conventionally, in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), oligonucleotide primers bind to the template DNA in an antiparallel complementary way and the template DNA is amplified as it is. Here we describe an approach in which the first primer binds in a parallel complementary orientation to the single-stranded DNA, leading to synthesis in a parallel direction. Further reactions happened in a conventional way leading to the synthesis of PCR product having polarity opposite to the template used. This is the first study showing that synthesis of DNA can happen also in a parallel direction.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Worldwide, there is an issue of irreproducibility in life science research. In the USA alone $28 billion per year spent on preclinical research is not reproducible. You may have experienced, non-specific amplification of DNA in a PCR reaction, non-specific hybridization in Southern and northern hybridization and then have tried harder to find out conditions which give you better results. You may have experienced, non-specific cloning reactions and then must have tried to screen out a specific clone out of non-specific ones. Even today we do not have answer as to why petunia flowers turn white on overexpression of a gene which should have made it more purple. None of our gene knockout technology explains whether they have taken out one and only one gene and the remainder of the genes have not been affected. To the best of my knowledge, there is no whole genome sequence information available for knock out organisms. I wish to inform readers that the Human Genome Project is not yet complete even though its first draft was announced 15 years ago. All over the world, billions of dollars are still invested in a hope to find solutions for various diseases. How can we find solutions if the molecular techniques used show errors and many times we are unable to reproduce the same findings in different labs. In 2012 the Biotechnology Company Amgen with a team of 100 scientists found that only 10% (6 out of 53) of research published by reputable labs in top journals is reproducible and 90% of money ($28 billion) is wasted. It looks like that even after development of high throughput techniques and instruments, research worldwide is losing accuracy and precision. It is a worse situation for biotechnology/pharmaceutical industries who are going to invest or have invested millions of dollars for their new drug development programme. It’s again a far worse situation for the public who are looking forward to scientists one day finding solutions to deadly diseases and producing cheaper drugs and the best treatments soon

Perspectives