Research Information System
Turk Hijyen ve Deneysel Biyoloji Dergisi, vol.73, no.2, pp.183-198, 2016 (Scopus)
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), is a simple, effective and widely used enzymatic technic especially in the field of molecular biology which provides the opportunity to amplify a specific DNA fragment from DNA complex pool. Several PCR techniques such as realtime PCR, quantitative and qualitative PCR, Reverse Transcriptase PCR, Nested PCR and multiplex PCR have been developed since the first invention of PCR. Due to the various difficulties of the PCR techniques developed so far, widening the application fields and finding out more advanced level of PCR techniques have become the first priority of the researchers. Digital PCR (dPCR) technology has been developed as a new method to permit the evaluation of the small changes in the copy number variations of the rare mutations, differences between the gene expression changes or state of methylation. Digital PCR is a PCR based new technique for the sensitive measurement of number of DNA copies, it provides opportunity to do large number of PCR with a few number of sample dilution and it has so many small compartments where seperate PCRs are executed in each. At the same time, dPCR leaves some of the quantitative methods behind with the performance of determining the quantity of small amount of genetic material within seconds. This method shows high sensitivity with the strategy of counting single molecule. It also attracks the attention as a method having quite a high reliability and repeatability level. This review aims to give insight for dPCR development history and the possible difficulties came across in its application.