Example

What percent of the product molecules contain an error after PCR (30 cycles) with different polymerases?

Polymerase

1 kb template

3 kb template

Phusion High-Fidelity DNA Polymerases (HF Buffer)

1.32%

3.96%

Phusion High-Fidelity DNA Polymerases (GC Buffer)

2.85%

8.55%

Pyrococcus furiosus DNA polymerase

8.4%

25.2%

Taq DNA polymerase

68.4%

205.2%

The table above demonstrates the low error rate of Phusion DNA Polymerase. After 30 cycles of PCR amplifying a 3 kb template, only 3.96 % of the product DNA molecules contain 1 (nucleotide) error each. This means that 96.04 % of the product molecules are entirely error-free. In contrast, after the same PCR protocol performed with Taq DNA polymerase, every product molecule contains an average of 2 errors.