title: Development of polymerase chain reaction-based assays for bacterial gene detection.
abstract: Polymerase chain reaction-based assays provide rapid, simple, and sensitive detection of bacterial genes, but are not without their drawbacks. This review summarizes the principal advantages and disadvantages of PCR-based bacterial gene detection, provides guidelines for the development and validation of new PCR assays, and describes potential pitfalls that may be encountered and how these can be avoided.
authors.affiliation: Infectious Diseases (111F), VA Medical Center and Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55417, USA. johns007@tc.umn.edu
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D017931:DNA Primers / Q000138:chemical synthesis; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis*; D005798:Genes, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers; D004269:DNA, Bacterial