Abstract

Quantitative real-time PCR of respiratory viruses in throat swabs: microfluidics vs nanofluidics

Crystale Lim Siew Ying, Assistant Professor, UCSI University

Our lab was tasked with developing a method for the quantitation of four common respiratory viruses in throat swabs: human adenovirus, human rhinovirus, human enterovirus and influenza A virus. This talk outlines the considerations we had regarding the selection of the quantitation platform (conventional real-time PCR versus Fluidigm Biomark high-throughput real-time PCR) for this objective, including advantages and limitations of both approaches. Other quantitative real-time PCR parameters we considered included type of internal control, real-time PCR chemistry, strategy for quantitation and data analysis.