小中大PCR and multiplex PCR guide
Designing PCR programs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Basic Principles (see also Page 01)
The requirement of an optimal PCR reaction is to amplify a specific locus without any unspecific by-products. Therefore, annealing needs to take place at a sufficiently high temperature to allow only the perfect DNA-DNA matches to occur in the reaction. For any given primer pair, the PCR program can be selected based on the composition (GC content) of the primers and the length of the expected PCR product. In the majority of the cases, products expected to be amplified are relatively small (from 0.1 to 2-3 kb). (For long-range PCR (amplifying products of 10 to 20-30 kb) commercial kits are available). The activity of the Taq polymerase is about 2000 nucleotides/minute at optimal temperature (72-78o C) and the extension time in the reaction can be calculated accordingly.
As the activity of the enzyme may not be always optimal during the reaction, an easy rule applied successfully by the author was to consider an extension time (in minutes) equal to the number of kb of the product to be amplified (1 min for a 1 kb product, 2 min for a two kb product etc.). Later on, after the product become "known", extension time may be further reduced.
Many researchers use a 2-5 minutes first denaturing step before the actual cycling starts. This is supposed to help denaturing the target DNA better (especially the hard to denature templates). Also, a final last extension time, of 5-10 minutes, is described in many papers (supposedly to help finish the elongation of many or most PCR products initiated during the last cycle). Both these steps have been tested for a numer of different loci, and, based on this experience, neither the first denaturing nor the last extension time changed in any way the outcome of the PCR reaction. Therefore, it is the author's habit not to use these steps (light blue in the table below) anymore.
The annealing time can be chosen based on the melting temperature of the primers (which can be calculated using othe many applications, freely available for molecular biologists). This may work, but sometimes the results may not match the expectations. Therefore, a simple procedure used many times by the author was to use an initial annealing temperature of 54 o C (usually good for most primers with a length around 20 bp or more). If unspecific products result, this temperature shoud be inccreased. If the reaction is specific (only the expected product is synthesized) the temperature can be used as is.
For the seventy or so primers used during this work, a denaturing time of 30-60 seconds was sufficient to achieve good PCR products. To long a denaturing time, will increase the time the Taq polymerase is subjected at high temperatures, and increases the percentage of polymerase molecules that lose their activity.
Number of cycles. In general, 30 cycles should be sufficient for a usual PCR reaction. An increased number of cycles will not dramatically change the amount of product (see below).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------