Real-Time PCR in Veterinary Microbiology

Abstract

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a nucleicacid-based technique that enables the rapid and sensitive detection of specific microorganisms. The technique consists basically of the enzymatic synthesis of millions of copies of a target DNA sequence. PCR is likely to have a strong impact in the epidemiologic, treatment and prevention of animal infectious diseases. Although PCR is widely used in an increasing number of applications, those in the area of microbiology, and diagnosis of infectious diseases have under gone outstanding advances in recent years. The conventional culture technique used to identify many microbial pathogens is slow and labour intensive. Many useful nucleic acid probes and immunological assays have been developed for diagnostic purposes, but these techniques also have some deficiencies. PCR has some short comings, such as problem caused by contaminants and inhibitors, or lack of appropriate sequences for designing specific primers. In this review, RT-PCR methods, their use in veterinary microbiology and comparison with conventional PCR were discussed.