Amanda’s Blog

 Taq DNA polymerase is a heat stable DNA polymerase found in the organism Thermus aquaticus. It is used in PCR because it can withstand high temperatures and remains viable after the DNA is heated to 95°C during the denaturation step. It also allows the elongation to run at a higher temperature, which increases the efficiency of replication. A drawback to using Taq is that it has a high error rate due to its lack of 3’-5’ exonuclease proofreading activity.