2014 Volume 72 Issue 4 Pages 370-381
DNA is a typical chemical compound consisted of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus atoms. But the marked difference of DNA from other chemicals and biopolymers is that DNA can be amplified by polymerase. No matter how small amount of DNA can be in principle amplified. This has been achieved by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR needs polymerase, templates, and primers. In this review, we focused our attention on the chemical probing of PCR primers. Because PCR is a basic technology in biology research fields, we sometime uses chemically labeled primers without any consciousness on its chemistry behind. We would like to emphasize that chemically labeled primers contained a lot of chemistry ideas and much study is still necessary for advancing the PCR for SNP typing and genetic diagnosis, and other fields. Here, we focus the affinity-capture primers and signaling primers. The former is used for purification, isolation and manipulation of PCR product by high specificity and affinity to the cognate molecules by the molecular-molecular interaction. The latter has fluorescent molecule or fluorescence binding sites in hairpin primers, and the fluorescence emitted from the primer is used for a PCR monitoring system.
