Widely used virus assay shown unreliable when compared to other methods

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 19:42 in Biology & Nature

In the course of doing research on the mosquito-borne pathogens chikungunya virus (CHIKV) and o' nyong-nyong virus (ONNV), Virginia Tech researchers have discovered an inconvenient truth about an assay, strand-specific quantitative real-time PCR (ssqPCR), increasingly being used to detect and measure replicating viral RNA in infected cells and tissues. The method most labs are using for ssqPCR is unreliable.

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