PCR follows a cyclic process consisting of three main steps:
1. Denaturation: Heating the reaction mixture to around 94-98°C to separate the double-stranded DNA into single strands. 2. Annealing: Cooling the mixture to 50-65°C to allow primers to attach to the single-stranded DNA. 3. Extension: Raising the temperature to 72°C to enable the DNA polymerase to synthesize new DNA strands by adding nucleotides to the primers.
These steps are repeated for 25-35 cycles, leading to exponential amplification of the target DNA sequence.
