ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase Principle of aptamer-based hot start PCR The ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase is a mixture of an aptamer-based inhibitor and a recombinant thermo-stable Taq DNA polymerase designed for preventing or minimizing nonspecific DNA amplification in PCR reaction. The inactivation of polymerase is achieved by a reversible bond of the aptamer to the polymerase at temperatures below 45°C. The aptamer inhibitor releases polymerase during normal PCR cycling. The aptamer-based inhibition omitting the time-consuming initial activation step required by chemically modified or antibodybased hot start polymerases. With a high DNA synthesis rate and high thermo-stability, ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase allows reactions to be set up at room temperature and is suitable for common and specialized PCR applications. High sensitivity Figure 1. ExcelTaq™ ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II shows absolute amplicon when pre-incubation at 37˚C and 42˚C. Reactions were subjected to a pre-incubation at 37˚C or 42˚C for 10 minutes before initial denaturation step. General Taq DNA polymerase generated primer dimers and failed to amplify target due to enzyme activated at 37˚C or 42˚C. Figure 3. ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase shows high sensitivity to amplify from low amount of templates. Each set of PCR reactions contained either 1 pg, 10 pg, or 1 ng of HeLa cell cDNA as templates. ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase successfully amplified targets from lower amount of templates, in comparison with hot-start DNA polymerases from other suppliers and general Taq DNA polymerase. pg Figure 4. ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase amplifies from plasmid template amounts as low as 1 fg. Order information GAPDH primer-dimer Cat. No. Figure 2. ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase shows high specificity on amplifying target DNA. The optimal annealing temperature of GAPDH primer set is 58˚C. Improper annealing temperature set at 52˚C may force primer-dimer formation. ExcelTaq™ Hot Start II DNA Polymerase eliminated primer-dimer and increased amounts of desired product. Taq DNA polymerase reduced target amplification due to primer-dimer formation at improper annealing temperature of 52˚C. Product Name