Severe overloading does cause bands to show up at different sizes than expected. For pcr gels its not necessarily by that much, but when running prep gels it can be quite significant.
An extension time that is too short may fail to produce any amplification products or may result in non- specific, short products, while overly long extension times can causes diffusely smeared electrophoresis bands.
Many of the common problems with PCR and RT-PCR are identified during agarose gel electrophoresis of the reaction products. These include the absence of the expected amplification product, the presence of nonspecific products, excessive smearing, and the presence of a “primer dimer” band.
Step : 3 Extension Generally, the reaction mixture is heated to a temperature intermediate between denaturation and annealing at this stage. 72°C is the ideal temperature for Taq polymerase. The polymerase extends the primers from 5' to 3'.
The extension time of PCR depends upon the synthesis rate of DNA polymerase and the length of target DNA. The typical extension time for Taq DNA Polymerase is 1 min/kb, whereas that of Pfu DNA polymerase is 2 min/kb.
The final stage is the extension step (20 sec to 1 min at 72 °C), which is performed so that the DNA polymerase extends the primer sequences from the 3' of each primer to the end of the amplicon. A 1 min extension is typically sufficient to synthesize PCR fragments up to 2 kilobases (kb).
Extension Time Extensions are normally performed at 68°C. As a general rule, use extension times of one minute per 1000 base pairs (e.g. 3 minutes for a 3 kb product) For products less than 1 kb, use 45-60 seconds. Products greater than 3 kb, or reactions using more than 30 cycles, may require longer extensions.
Increasing the final extension time improves full-length replication and yield of a 0.7-kb, GC-rich PCR fragment from human gDNA in these experiments. The smear under the desired band in 0 minute final extension suggests incomplete extension of the PCR amplicon by the DNA polymerase.