Molecular/HIV laboratory

Real time PCR

Summary

Science

Clinical

Science

Real time PCR is a quantitative approach to measuring DNA or RNA, this is particularly useful for measuring the viral load present in an infection. Viral RNA is chemically extracted from a patient’s blood sample and it is then artificially copied using small artificially produced strands of DNA called primers that are known to be complementary to sections of HIV RNA. When these primers bind to the viral RNA a process that mimics cellular RNA replication is initiated ultimately resulting in millions of copies of the original target sequence. At the same time fluorescent probes are added that also bind specifically to the viral DNA. The increasing amount of fluorescence can be measured over time and compared with fluorescence from samples with known starting concentrations of a non-infectious artificial viral construct. In this, the amount of fluorescence at certain time points is directly proportional to the actual viral load.

• Background
• Clinical