Kary Mullis (Nobel 1993) developed the
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to amplify the quantity of target DNA
in vitro.
The target DNA is denatured into single strands.
Each strand is annealed to a short, complementary primer.
DNA polymerase and nucleotides extend the primers, using the
single-stranded DNA as a template.
After one cycle of amplification, the amount of target DNA has been
doubled.