Taq polymerase
Thermostable form of DNA polymerase I used in polymerase chain reaction / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Taq polymerase is a thermostable DNA polymerase I named after the thermophilic eubacterial microorganism Thermus aquaticus, from which it was originally isolated by Chien et al. in 1976.[1] Its name is often abbreviated to Taq or Taq pol. It is frequently used in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method for greatly amplifying the quantity of short segments of DNA.
DNA polymerase I, thermostable | |||||||
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Identifiers | |||||||
Organism | Thermus aquaticus | ||||||
Symbol | polA | ||||||
UniProt | P19821 | ||||||
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T. aquaticus is a bacterium that lives in hot springs and hydrothermal vents, and Taq polymerase was identified[1] as an enzyme able to withstand the protein-denaturing conditions (high temperature) required during PCR.[2] Therefore, it replaced the DNA polymerase from E. coli originally used in PCR.[3]