Evaluation of the sensitivity of a measles diagnostic real-time RT-PCR assay incorporating recently observed priming mismatch variants, 2024
Andrew S. Beck, Elena N. Lopareva, Hyun Sub Hwang, Derek Hart, Marcos de Almeida, Raydel Anderson, Paul A. Rota, Bettina Bankamp
Abstract
We investigated a variant of measles virus that encodes three mismatches to the reverse priming site for a widely used diagnostic real-time RT-PCR assay; reduction of sensitivity was hypothesised. We examined performance of the assay in context of the variant using in silico data, synthetic RNA templates and clinical specimens. Sensitivity was reduced observed at low copy numbers for templates encoding the variant sequence. We designed and tested an alternate priming strategy, rescuing the sensitivity of the assay.
Topics & Concepts
In silicoMeasles virusPriming (agriculture)Sensitivity (control systems)Context (archaeology)BiologyTemplateComputational biologyReal-time polymerase chain reactionAssay sensitivityGeneticsVirologyMeaslesMedicineGeneComputer sciencePathologyGerminationElectronic engineeringBotanyAlternative medicineProgramming languageEngineeringPaleontologyVaccinationVirology and Viral DiseasesHIV Research and TreatmentAnimal Virus Infections Studies