Question

All of these things are true of PCR EXCEPT:

a) It works by heating/cooling the DNA
b) Primers must be added to attach to the sites to be copied
c) Nucleotides must be added to make more DNA
d) Restriction enzymes must be added to break apart the strands

Answer 1

The false statement about PCR is that restriction enzymes must be added to break apart the strands. In PCR, heat is used for DNA strand separation, not enzymes.

Step-by-step explanation:

The statement among the options about Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) that is not true is: d) Restriction enzymes must be added to break apart the strands. PCR indeed works by heating and cooling the DNA, known as thermal cycling, which involves multiple cycles of denaturation (heating), annealing (cooling to attach primers), and extension (DNA synthesis). Primers are used to delineate the region of DNA to be amplified, and nucleotides are added to synthesize the new DNA. However, restriction enzymes are not used in PCR; instead, the DNA strands are separated by heating (denaturation). The commonly used Taq polymerase is heat-stable and able to synthesize new DNA strands at high temperatures, which is essential for the PCR process.