But, what about DNA polymerase and DNA replication?

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Ms. Dewey-Hagborg amplifies small DNA strands using a technique called PCR polymerase chain reaction.

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It was a stretch of DNA that could be transcribed by an enzyme called polymerase into a chemically similar molecule known as RNA. The RNA acted as a messenger that was itself translated into protein molecules in sub-cellular factories called ribosomes.

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In particular, this sensitivity makes the new chips better at searching for strands of DNA. At the moment, such searches require the number of DNA molecules in a sample to be multiplied using a trick called the polymerase chain reaction before there is a decent chance of detecting the target.

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Current detection tools using nanotechnology allow high-speed molecular detection of pathogens through analysis of their DNA in a matter of a few minutes where classical detection tools using regular PCR (polymerase chain reaction) would take over six hours.

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