Reflections on PCR and Primer Design - Week 6
“Optimization of primer sets and detection protocols for SARS-CoV-2 of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) using PCT and real-time PCR” (Park et al., 2020) provided a good review of the steps to follow when designing and testing primers for qPCR. While the methods themselves were not novel, it was nice to see stringent practices followed in a text-book type manner but in an applied and relavent way. Not only did it supply an understandable walkthrough of all the primer design steps, but they also clearly tied in the concept of multiplexing and how one can benefit from incorporating it into their study. While the paper was not focused on eDNA itself, it is clear that the same principals presented here apply for designing species specific primers used in eDNA studies. Also, depending on the downstream applications of your experiment, multiplexing eDNA (or other DNA) samples can be a time and money saver that students in this class may consider when designing their experiments.