Contact:
Prof Aini Ideris
Universiti Putra Malaysia
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Rapid Detection of Avian Influenza Virus Using One Tube Sybr Green I Based Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
HAZALINA ZULKIFLI, AINI IDERIS, ABDUL RAHMAN OMAR, AND SHARIFAH SYED HASSAN.
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
Veterinary Research Institute, 59 Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah, P.O. Box 369, 30740 Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia.
Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) researchers have come up with a one step molecular based technique which can quickly identify the bird flu virus. This work is a collaborative research effort with researchers from Veterinary Research Institute, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. The bird flu or avian influenza virus is highly contagious and causes severe disease in domestic poultry including chickens and turkey. Routine methods for detecting and subtyping of influenza A virus (AIV) which includes isolating the virus in embryonated eggs, followed by haemagglutination and haemagglutination inhibition tests may take up to 1 week. More recently, the use of molecular techniques such as RT-PCR to detect viruses have made the process of identifying the virus much quicker.
Researchers at UPM have taken this further by developing a one step method for the detection of bird flu virus subtypes. This technique is a one-step SYBR Green I based real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (real time RT-PCR). The tests were initially done on AIV subtype H3N8. Further tests have shown that the assay was able to detect other subtypes including H5 and H9. The developed assay is as sensitive as virus isolation in standard embryonated eggs inoculation method, and yet offers a rapid, sensitive and accurate assay, which can be done within 5 to 7 hours.
