Nucleic acid assays, bioluminescent

Strain specific lysis by bacteriophages can be used to release intracellular ATP or adenylate kinase (AK). At the 13 ISBC a paper is presented on identification of bacteria using bacteriophages. There are also several papers on bioluminescent realtime detection of nucleic acid amplification, which may be used for identification of bacteria. In these assays either pyrophosphate or AMP is converted to ATP as a measure of the amplification reaction. 

Novel Bioluminescent Assay for Real-Time Nucleic Acid Amplification... 

To test and optimise the coupled reaction, RNA hydrolysis was simulated by the addition of AMP as a preformed product to a complete nucleic acid amplifrcation cocktail. Additions of AMP gave linear bioluminescent responses over a range of concentrations from 0.1 to 10 /tmol/L AMP (Fig. 1). The ability to detect RNA-DNA heteroduplex hydrolysis with this assay was tested using a proprietary exonuclease degradation system. 5 -AMP released from the poly rA/oligo dT probertemplate heteroduplex was measured using the triple enzyme coupled... 

Gandelman O, Church V, Murray JAH, Tisi LC. A single-step bioluminescent endpoint assay for nucleic acid amplification. This volume... 

---