Efficiency of polymerase chain reaction processes: A stochastic model

A stochastic model for the efficiency of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) processes is presented. The model is based on the assumption that the i'th nucleotide incorporation on the DNA template takes tau
_i
seconds, where tau
_i
has an exponential distribution with mean 1/lambda
_i
. In this paper, given lambda
_i
that can be obtained from the primer-template sequence, temperature profile, enzyme rate, and other assay conditions, we calculate the efficiency of a multi-step PCR process using the distribution of the summation of non-identical exponential distributions.