Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a topic in most introductory science classes, but it can be hard to grasp the whole process. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier.

The initial description of the PCR process was discovered by the Norwegian scientist Kjell Kleppe and his colleagues and described in a paper published in 1971. Not many articles bother to mention this, but I feel it’s my duty as a good Norwegian 😛

The heat resistant enzymes that became a key component in industrializing PCR were discovered in the 1960 in Yellowstone and are also widely used in corona-virus tests.

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Whatisbiotechnology.com “PCR” https://www.whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/science/summary/pcr/ last accessed 6. february 2021

Kleppe, Ohtsuka, Kleppe, Molineux, Khorana (1971) “Studies on  polynucleotides. XCVI. Repair replications of short synthetic DNA’s as  catalyzed by DNA polymerases.” doi:  10.1016/0022-2836(71)90469-4 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4927950/

Maya Wei-Haas “Key ingredient in coronavirus tests comes from Yellowstone’s lakes” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/key-ingredient-in-coronavirus-tests-comes-from-yellowstone/ published 31. march 2020, last accessed 6. february 2021