You determine that you have only three copies left of an important DNA fragment, so you decide to amplify it. Using flanking primers, how many PCR cycles would you have to run to generate over one billion (109) copies of the fragment?

Hello. This question is incomplete. The full question is:

"You determine that you have only 3 copies left of an important DNA fragment, so you decide to amplify it. Using flanking primers, how many PCR cycles would you have to run to generate over one billion (10^9) copies of the fragment? "

Answer:

Approximately 29 cycles of PCR would be required.

Explanation:

As you may already know, PCR is a technique used in molecular biology that allows part of a DNA molecule to be recycled into millions of copies.

PCR allows this replication to be done through cycles. Each PCR cycle lasts about 2 minutes and allows the DNA molecule to undergo the separation of the strands, the binding of the primers and the synthesis of new DNA strands through DNA polymerase. This cycle is usually repeated 32 times, but this number may change depending on the number of copies the researcher thinks is necessary.

In this case, if a researcher wants 10 ^ 9 copies of DNA, he must do the following calculation to find the number of PCR cycles needed:

32 ^ x = 10 ^ 9

x = 28.3 = approximately 29 cycles.