Whats the difference between DNA primers and RNA primers?
Besides the obvious, that DNA primers are made from DNA and RNA primers are made from RNA…Physically, the RNA primer will bind more tightly to its template than the DNA primer will. This is probably left over from RNA transcription..when you separate the strands of DNA to make RNA, you don’t want the DNA zipping closed again and pushing the new RNA chain off. RNA primers are seen only in nature, and are not used in PCR and many other molecular biology the way DNA primers are. They are used in the first step of DNA replication in the cell, and are put in place by a primase. They are later replaced by DNA by a DNA polymerase. DNA primers are used for many things, chief among which is PCR. Older protocols often call for radiolabeled primers to be used as probes in Northern and Southern analysis to detect a desired DNA or RNA fragment.
