Comparison of Commercially Available Thermostable DNA Polymerases with Reverse Transcriptase Activity in Coupled Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction Assays

Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is an important tool for the detection of target RNA molecules and the assay of RNA pathogens. Coupled RT-PCR is performed with an enzyme mixture containing a reverse transcriptase and a thermostable DNA polymerase. To date, several biotechnol...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Evgeniya V. Smirnova, Konstantin A. Blagodatskikh, Ekaterina V. Barsova, Dmitriy A. Varlamov, Vladimir M. Kramarov, Konstantin B. Ignatov
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-01-01
Series:Methods and Protocols
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9279/8/1/11
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Summary:Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is an important tool for the detection of target RNA molecules and the assay of RNA pathogens. Coupled RT-PCR is performed with an enzyme mixture containing a reverse transcriptase and a thermostable DNA polymerase. To date, several biotechnological companies offer artificial thermostable DNA polymerases with a built-in reverse transcriptase activity for use in the coupled RT-PCR instead of the enzyme mixtures. Here, we compared the artificial DNA polymerases and conventional enzyme mixtures for the RT-PCR by performing end-point and real-time RT-PCR assays using severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) RNA and endogenous mRNA molecules as templates. We found that the artificial enzymes were suitable for different RT-PCR applications, including SARS-CoV2 RNA detection but not for long-fragment RT-PCR amplification.
ISSN:2409-9279