Deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (DNTPs) consist of a deoxyribose sugar, a nitrogenous base (adenine, guanine, thymine or cytosine) and three phosphate groups. There are four different types of DNTPs (dATP, dTTP, dGTP, dCTP).

PCR (polymerase chain reaction) is a technique used in molecular biology to amplify a particular DNA segment (a piece of DNA sequence is repeatedly copied). Multiple copies are produced from a single DNA segment through PCR using DNTPs. Basically, PCR is DNA replication on a very large scale.

In polymerisation, DNTPs serves two important purposes:

•The DNTPs act as building blocks/substrate for the new DNA strands being synthesized during polymerisation.

•They also serve as the energy source for polymerisation as the DNTPs contain high-energy phosphate bonds.