It has to do with the amount and shear size of he parent molecule. The primers are small and present in way over abundance. The parent molecule is huge compared to the primer (and all basepairs have to match up). I recall that the textbook Genes (don’t know what number they are on now) has a good section on DNA annealing times. (I believe it was 5 or 6 that had a nice graph).

GL

Yes very good observation. Temperature does play a role in annealing. Primers of to high a GC ratio or long primers will have higher annealing temps. I will try an post back on with more details but I have a few meeting today.

The specific complementary association due to H2 bonding of single-stranded nucleic acids is referred to as "annealing": two complementary sequences will form hydrogen bonds between their complementary bases (G to C, and A to T or U) and form a stable double-stranded, anti-parallel "hybrid" molecule. One may make nucleic acid (NA) single-stranded for the purpose of annealing – if it is not single-stranded already, like most RNA viruses – by heating it to a point above the "melting temperature" of the double- or partially-double-stranded form, and then flash-cooling it: this ensures the "denatured" or separated strands do not re-anneal. Additionally, if the NA is heated in buffers of ionic strength lower than 150mM NaCl, the melting temperature is generally less than 100oC – which is why PCR works with denaturing temperatures of 91-97oC.

Tm = 4(G + C) + 2(A + T)oC.

---

Attachments:

need my 5 posts – 3, sorry!

hi, i have a problem , can you help me in this issue? 😐
i design a primer in blast , it was specific when i checked it in blast but when i used it, i had nonspecific band , what can i do now? if i use high temp. for annealing ,will my result improve? ❗ ❓
thanks

Did you also check autokomplementarity?
You could try to change the temperature, you could try 2-step cycling, adding additives (like DMSO, depends on your polymerase) or change the polymerase

Hi! I’m new to this and to PCRs :-(- and desperate to find out if my using only 1 ul of homemade Taq instead of 1,5 (like the "recipe" said) will affect much ( and how) my PCR ! It will be done in about 15min, but I would very much like to know if I’ll have to come back in the week-end and repeat it … Thanks!
AniRock

That depends on activity of your Pol, if is it highly active even in the 1 ul than it’s for sure fine, but if you have only low activity than even 5 ul may not be enough 😉