Question

In the polymerase chain reaction, DNA is heated to 95 degrees Celsius and nucleotides, enzymes and DNA primers are added to the mixture. Why are DNA primers added during the polymerase chain reaction?

Answer 1

I believe the correct answer to be:

DNA primers do 2 things that are

1) They provide the free 3' OH group that is a requirement of the DNA polymerase as it can only add new nucleotides at this location based on the template DNA.

2) They bind at the specific location based on the complementarity in the whole sequence and this property can be used to exactly define what part of the DNA is replicated during PCR.

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