Quality control of the polymerase chain reaction.

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has revolutionized both the basic and the applied aspects of the biomedical field with more than 40,000 papers having been published employing this technique. PCR has become an indispensable tool for basic research applications, such as cloning (1), sequencing (2), mRNA analysis (3), DNA and RNA quantitation (4-6), mutagenesis (7), and gene detection (8). Because of its ability to amplify minute quantities of nucleic acid specifically, PCR has also been applied with great success in clinical diagnostics (9-11), genetic testing (12-15), forensics (16,17), and environmental testing (18,19).