How can I reduce the effect of primer dimers?

Primer dimers are essentially primer partial base complementary binding and small molecular weight double-stranded DNA fragments formed by the action of Taq enzyme. Therefore, in order to reduce the production of primer dimers, it is necessary to reduce the complementary binding of the primers themselves or reduce the non-specific binding of the reaction, which is roughly the following methods:  

1. Redesign the primers to improve the specificity of the primers.  

2. Appropriately reduce the concentration of primers in the reaction solution and increase the concentration of the template in the reaction solution.  

3. Increase the annealing temperature of the reaction, and higher annealing temperature can reduce non-specific binding. However, too high annealing temperature may affect the production of the product, so it needs to be adjusted according to the experimental results.  

4. You can set up a control reaction, replace the template with water, and distinguish the primer dimer and the band of interest in the experimental group according to the results of the control.