A significant number of pathogenic microorganisms can be found in environmental reservoirs (air, water, soil). It is important to assess the viability status of these organisms to determine whether they pose a threat to public health. Classical methods for determining viability are time consuming. Hence, molecular methods have been developed to address this problem. Molecular methods offer spee...

  Background: Due to some limitations of serological methods in diagnosis of patients infected with HIV-1 (human immunodeficiency virus) and HCV (hepatitis C virus), it is profoundly important to use molecular methods for the detecting of these infectious agents. However, the most significant problems are the exorbitant cost of these methods and the need of a thermocycler which is an expensive...

Real-time amplification and quantification of specific nucleic acid sequences plays a major role in medical and biotechnological applications. In the case of infectious diseases, such as HIV, quantification of the pathogen-load in patient specimens is critical to assess disease progression and effectiveness of drug therapy. Typically, nucleic acid quantification requires expensive instruments, ...

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using oligonucleotides based on the repetitive sequence (IS986) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as a primer and the Gen-Probe Amplified Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Direct Test (MTD), which combines an M. tuberculosis rRNA amplification method with the hybridization protection assay format, were evaluated for detection of M. tuberculosis in clinical samples. The ...