Application of Nucleic Acid Amplification Technology for Detection of Rna Viruses: Current Status and Future Prospects

The application of bioengineering to study the molecular epidemiology of viral diseases should facilitate rapid detection of an active infection. The surge of new techniques in cellular immunology and molecular biology has made possible the development of rapid, sensitive, specific and inexpensive assays for detection of RNA viruses using nucleic acid amplification. Because of the Ribonucleic acid (RNA) nature of the virus genome, a Reverse Transcription (RT) step involving synthesis of complementary DNA (cDNA) from RNA template would be necessary, before cyclic amplification with PCR. In this study, we evaluated the diagnostic potential of the Reverse Transcriptase (RT) polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)-based assays, recently developed in our laboratory, for rapid detection of viral infections in cell culture and clinical samples.