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Klaus Zimmermann and ences 16–18, 21, 31, 32 and 84). This plates, different PCR strategies and
Josef W. Mannhalter assay is based on competitive co-ampli- modes of detecting PCR products.
Immuno AG fication of a specific target sequence to-
gether with known concentrations of an
Vienna, Austria internal standard in one reaction tube. CONSTRUCTION OF INTERNAL
The internal standard has to share primer STANDARDS FOR
recognition sites with the spe-cific COMPETITIVE PCR
template, both specific template and
INTRODUCTION internal standard must be PCR-am- Generation and testing of suitable
plified with the same efficiency and it internal standards and the choice of
The polymerase chain reaction must be possible to analyze the PCR- primer pairs are among the most
(PCR), first described by Saiki et al. amplified products of specific template crucial and time-consuming aspects of
(79), is a highly sensitive and specific and internal standard separately. Quan- setting up a competitive PCR protocol.
methodology for detection of nucleic titation is then performed by comparing The simplest way to choose suitable
acids and a useful tool for quantitation the PCR signal of the specific template pri-mers is to use, as far as possible,
of the amount of specific nucleic acids with the PCR signals obtained with primers already widely used and/or
present in a sample. The simplest ap- known concentrations of the competitor well described. If new primers have to
proach to quantitation of PCR and re- (the internal standard). Ever since this be designed, computer programs in
verse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) method was first described (6,38,99), it combination with sequence data bases
products (reviewed by References 17, has been widely used for quantitation of may be helpful tools.
21, 31 and 32) is measurement of the cellular RNA and DNA as well as vi-ral General concepts of PCR primer de-
amount of amplification product in the and bacterial nucleic acids. Exam-ples sign have been reviewed by Dieffen-
exponential phase by reference to the reported on include the quantita-tion of bach et al. (26). Since different primer
dilution series of an external standard. cytokine expression (6,38,52,91, 99,103) pairs for the same gene can exhibit up to
However, accurate quantitation with this and of viral nucleic acids such as 1000-fold differences in sensitivity (44),
type of PCR is hampered by a number of hepatitis B (46), hepatitis C (9,40,53, special emphasis should be placed on
variabilities that can occur during 58,75,78,106), human cytomegalovirus testing the specificity and efficiency of
sample preparation or in the course of (35), herpes simplex virus (74) or hu- primer pairs in advance before inter-nal
the reaction, and minor varia-tions in man immunodeficiency virus type 1 standards are generated. Once the
reaction conditions are greatly (HIV-1) (3,5,36,51,62,70,71,81,88,92) appropriate primer pair has been select-
magnified during the amplification and quantitation of bacteria, especially ed, various strategies for the construc-
process. These variabilities may partly of slow-growing species such as my- tion of internal standards may be used.
be overcome by normalizing the amount cobacteria (55). Furthermore, the utili-ty Internal standards for competitive
of PCR products of the specific template of competitive PCR or RT-PCR has PCR or RT-PCR are DNA or RNA
with respect to an internal ref-erence been demonstrated in the quantitation of fragments sharing the primer recogni-
template such as the cellular gene b- mitochondrial DNA (100) or mRNA tion sequences with the specific target
globin (20) amplified in the same expression (29,69) and assessment of yet yielding PCR products that are dis-
reaction tube. hereditary deficiencies (e.g., Reference tinguishable from the wild-type tem-
Alternatively, limiting dilution 43) or leukemias (22,93). plate. The easiest way to distinguish
using a nested primer methodology Considering the hundreds of pub- between wild-type template and inter-
(57,90) can be used in combination lished papers on the use of competitive nal standard is by differences in the size
with Pois-son statistics for evaluation PCR, it is not surprising that a great va- of the two products. This can be
of the results. riety of protocols exist. In the present achieved, for example, by constructing
The most precise quantitation of article, we shall review this methodolo- standards having the same sequence as
DNA and RNA can, however, be ob- gy, concentrating in particular on tech- the specific target but containing a dele-
tained by competitive PCR and com- nical aspects of competitive PCR, such tion or an insertion. The simplest con-
petitive RT-PCR (reviewed in Refer- as the construction of competitive tem- struction procedure is to use a compos-
V i e w p u b l i c a t i o n s t a t s