Development of inexpensive and simple PCR experiment method for high school biology

Abstract

In biological education at high schools in Japan, students are to learn biotechnology with experiencing concrete methods and techniques. However, experiments using biotechnology have not been conducted sufficiently due to high cost of equipment such as thermal cyclers in PCR. In this study, we developed an inexpensive and simple PCR method, in which heat retaining soup containers were used instead of a thermal cycler. Our results showed that DNA fragments were amplified without controlling the temperature by considering following three points; (1) suppression of temperature decrease in the containers for DNA denaturation, (2) lowering of the lower limit temperature of DNA denaturation, (3) shortening of the PCR program. In addition, all undergraduate students who conducted the PCR method succeeded in amplifying DNA fragments. It is thus expected that this method can be accepted at high schools as a useful teaching material.