Abstract
Quantitative PCR is used to gauge the abundance of specific nucleic acid species within purified samples. Due to its high sensitivity and minimal operation costs, this method is routinely applied in modern molecular bioscience laboratories. Nonetheless, all quantitative PCR experiments must include several carefully designed, yet simple, controls to ensure the reliability of the analyses. The aim of this chapter is to provide basic quantitative PCR methods, from primer design through data analysis, that are generally applicable to studies in microbiology. These methods allow the abundance of targeted RNA or DNA molecules to be determined in nucleic acid samples purified from a variety of biological sources.
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Acknowledgements
Part of this work was supported by Project Grant 535053 from the National Health and Medical Research Council. KH is supported by an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship funded by the Australian Research Council (grant DP110102680).
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Brzoska, A.J., Hassan, K.A. (2014). Quantitative PCR for Detection of mRNA and gDNA in Environmental Isolates. In: Paulsen, I., Holmes, A. (eds) Environmental Microbiology. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1096. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-712-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-712-9_3
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