Efficiency of DNA replication in the polymerase chain reaction (polymerization reactionybranching processesykinetic modelyquantitative polymerase chain reaction)

A detailed quantitative kinetic model for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is developed, which allows us to predict the probability of replication of a DNA molecule in terms of the physical parameters involved in the system. The important issue of the determination of the number of PCRcyclesduringwhichthisprobabilitycanbeconsideredto beaconstantissolvedwithintheframeworkofthemodel.New phenomena of multimodality and scaling behavior in the distribution of the number of molecules after a given number of PCR cycles are presented. The relevance of the model for quantitative PCR is discussed, and a novel quantitative PCR technique is proposed.