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PCR-based diagnostic test for SARS

Genetech, Sri Lanka's first private institute for molecular diagnostics and gene technology has announced a rapid laboratory test capable of determining whether a patient is infected with the coronavirus associated with SARS.

This test, which uses the latest techniques in molecular biology, is recommended by the World Health Organisation, asa definitive test for positively determining the presence of the coronavirus. It is available in Sri Lanka only at Genetech, a news release by the Institute states.

The test is based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, in which a fragment of ribonucleic acid (RNA) of the coronavirus is reverse-translated into a fragment of DNA, which is then copied several million times over, in order to give a visible DNA band in an agarose gel, by electrophoresis.

The technique is capable of detecting the presence of about 100 copies of the virus per millilitre in a patient sample, which would equate to a very low level of infection the release states.

This technique is known as Reverse Transcriptase-PCR or RT-PCR with agarose gel electrophoresis. The time required to determine the presence of the coronavirus is about six hours from the time of receiving the clinical sample.

The test is done in full conformity with WHO standards. The primers used for the RT-PCR reaction were synthesised according to a paper published by a German laboratory, the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, which announced in a New England Journal of Medicine that it had identified and sequenced a novel coronavirus that appears to be the cause of SARS.

Genetech has obtained the positive control RNA of the coronavirus from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, and the PCR primers from Sigma-Genosys, Australia. The entire procedure of testing is controlled by Genetech's own high standards of laboratory management in order to generate extremely reliable, error-free results according to the release.

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