Topic summary
DNA melting
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Nucleic acid thermodynamics.
Denaturation
The process of DNA melting is also used in molecular biology techniques, notably in the polymerase chain reaction. Although the temperature of DNA melting is not diagnostic in the technique, methods for estimating Tm are important for determining the appropriate temperatures to use in a protocol. DNA melting temperatures can also be used as a proxy for equalizing the hybridization strengths of a set of molecules, e.g. the oligonucleotide probes of DNA microarrays.