What is PCR Technology?
The explosion in molecular biology technology has initiated a new era in fungal identification. This cutting-edge technology for fungal identification is called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a nucleic acid-based technology. Every fungal species has its own-unique, characteristic genetic signature, which varies among species and can serve as a genetic fingerprint for their identification. The power of PCR is to amplify the selected sequence of genetic fingerprint to the level that it can be easily detected and quantitated. At the forefront of PCR technology is called real time quantitative PCR which is currently used in our laboratory. In this system, a fluorogenic probe is added into the PCR amplification process. This probe will emit fluorescence, and the levels of accumulated fluorescence can be detected and quantitated in real time, during the amplification process. This fluorogenic probe is specially designed to bind only to the selected sequence of fingerprint, thus, providing
