RNA amplification by nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) was used to detect serotype specific dengue viruses in artificially-infected female Aedes mosquitoes, in comparison with RT-PCR technique. NASBA could detect dengue virus serotype 2 and 4 below 0.1 PFU, which was more sensitive than RT-PCR, but this technique was as sensitive as RTPCR when detecting dengue virus serotype 1 a...

Nucleic acid fluorescent probes are playing increasingly important roles in biological sensing in recent years. In addition to the conventional functions of single-stranded DNA/RNA to hybridize with their complementary strands, affinity nucleic acids (aptamers) with specific target binding properties have also been developed, which has greatly broadened the application of nucleic acid fluoresc...

In the last decade, nucleic acid-based methods gradually started to replace or complement the culture-based methods and immunochemical assays in routine laboratories involved in food control. In particular, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was technically developed to the stage of good speed, sensitivity and reproducibility, at minimized risk of carry-over contamination. Basic advantag...

To the Editor: The rapid rate of HIV-I replication in vivo (10' virions per day), coupled with the poor fidelity of reverse transcription of the HIV-1 genome, results in the production of new virus variants (1). This makes it easy to understand how multiple clades of HIV-1 have emerged throughout the world and explains the development of genetic diversity even within clades (2). Numerous report...

Advances in microfluidics and the introduction of isothermal nucleic acid amplification assays have resulted in a range of solutions for nucleic acid amplification tests suited for point of care and field use. However, miniaturisation of instrumentation for such assays has not seen such rapid advances and fluorescence based assays still depend on complex, bulky and expensive optics such as fluo...

Enteroviruses are the causative agents of a number of diseases in humans. Group B coxsackieviruses are believed to be the most common viral agents responsible for human heart disease. Genomic data of enteroviruses has allowed developing new molecular approaches such as Nucleic Acid Sequence Based Amplification (NASBA) for detection of such viruses. In this study, coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) was de...

The in vitro amplification of biologically important nucleic acids has proceeded principally by a strategy of DNA replication. Polymerase chain reaction was the first such protocol to achieve this goal. In this report, a transcription-based amplification system (TAS) is described. Each cycle of the TAS is composed of two steps. The first is a cDNA synthesis step that produces one copy of a doub...