Naming PCR

Interviewee: Kary Mullis. Kary Mullis explains how the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was named. (DNAi Location: Manipulation > Techniques > Amplifying > Naming PCR)

The first record I have of it is when I made a computer file which I usually did whenever I had an idea, that would have been on the Monday when I got back, and I called it Chain Reaction.POL, meaning polymerase. That was the identifier for it and later I called the thing the Polymerase Chain Reaction, which a lot of people thought was a dumb name for it, but it stuck, and it became PCR.

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