How it Works: Real Time PCR Brendan Maher The instrumentation is basic: a thermal cycler for amplification, a light source for excitation of fluorescent probes (see chemistries below), a camera for ...

If you wake up one morning with a fever, shortness of breath and a cough — in other words, symptoms of the new coronavirus — you'll likely wonder how you can get tested for it and what that entails.

Since its invention in the 1980s, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) opened the door for applications such as genetic engineering, genotyping, and sequencing, and has become a fundamental part of ...