Nucleic acid-based testing amplification

Nucleic acid-based testing for infectious diseases, as for other clinical conditions, usually involves three major steps specimen processing, nucleic acid amplification, and... 

Nucleic acid probe methods which rely on the specificity of nucleic acid hybridization reaction, combined with the powerful methods of nucleic acid amplification, are expected to spawn many new diagnostic tests which may be useful in the detection and treatment of infectious diseases, cancer, and inherited disorders. The impact of development and applications of diagnostic tests based on nucleic acid probes and on Mab technology wiU be felt increasingly as deeper understanding of diseases at a molecular level is gained. 

All of these tasks can now be addressed with a family of novel tests collectively named product-enhanced reverse transcriptase (PERT) assays. PERT assays combine the broad detection range of RT tests with the high sensitivity of nucleic acid amplification procedures. PERT assays are based on the selective enhancement, by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or one of the various... 

Viral replication is detected by two types of tests target nucleic acid amplification based tests and hybridization (signal amplification) based tests. 

We have exemplified BART applications in molecular IVDs and demonstrated its compatibility with various amplification methods, its ability to detect and quantify different targets, to cope with crude sample preparations and to provide rapid results under challenging conditions. Overall, BART is a universal reporter system for any molecular in vitro diagnostic tests based on isothermal nucleic acid amplification techniques. 

Chapters 34-36 deal with different ways of using amplification methods to reveal polymorphism within nucleic acids. The RAPD technique (Chapter 34) uses short primers (normally 10 bases) in a PCR reaction on two or more DNA samples—several bands are produced and differences in the banding patterns infers the presence of different sequences in the two tested DNAs. These polymorphic bands behave as dominant genetic markers, and the technique is useful if a large number of markers must be found to distinguish a few (usually two) genotypes. 

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