The Polymerase Chain Reaction technique, widely used in molecular biology, allows to amplify the number of copies of specific DNA fragments through successive replication cycles. The aim of the quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction is to determine the initial amount of the specific nucleic acids from observations of the amplification process. This process depends on the probability that a DNA fragment will successfully duplicate after a replication cycle, this probability is called the reaction efficiency. We propose to estimate the initial quantity of DNA fragments and the reaction efficiency in a Bayesian framework under a Galton-Watson branching model of the amplification process. The estimators and credibility sets of the parameters are constructed via Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods.
This study is a joint work with Christine Jacob, INRA, France.