Studienarbeiten

The advent of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the 1980’s brought around a revolution in molecular biology and later in clinical diagnosis. PCR is now routinely performed in clinical and scientific research laboratories, including ours. Technical improvements on both the hardware and chemical side have reduced turn around times to about one hour depending on the number of amplification cycles required and length of the amplicon. But, although PCR is and will most likely remain the gold standard for DNA/RNA based analysis, the recent emergence of isothermal amplification methods also warrants attention. In this master thesis in particular, we will explore the suitability of recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) for our experimental needs and compare its performance to equivalent PCR experiments.