How and why is the bacterium Thermus aquaticus employed in recombinant DNA technology ? Explain.
Answer. Taq DNA polymerase isolated from thermophilic bacterium Thermus aquaticus synthesises the DNA region from gene of interest between the primers, using dNTPs (deoxynucleotide triphosphates) and Mg2+. The primers are extended towards each other so that the DNA segment lying between the two primers is copied. It is stable even at high temperatures.
Taq polymerase is heat stable enzyme and is able to withstand high temperature induced denaturation of DNA during PCR. Hence it is preferred in PCR reactions.
