where was the enzyme used in pcr found
T. aquaticus is a bacterium that lives in hot springs and hydrothermal vents, and Taq polymerase was identified as an enzyme able to withstand the protein-denaturing conditions (high temperature) required during PCR. Therefore, it replaced the DNA polymerase from E. coli originally used in PCR. Taq's optimum temperature for activity is 75 -- 80 ° C, with a half-life of greater than 2 hours at 92.5 ° C, 40 minutes at 95 ° C and 9 minutes at 97.5 ° C, and can replicate a 1000 base pair strand of DNA in less than 10 seconds at 72 ° C.