Your friend works at the Centers for Disease Control and has discovered a brand

Question

Your friend works at the Centers for Disease Control and has discovered a brand new virus that has been recently introduced into the human population. She has just developed a new assay that allows her to detect the virus using PCR products made from the blood of infected patients. The assay utilizes primers in the PCR reaction that hybridize to sequences in the viral genome.

Your friend is distraught because of the result she obtained (see Figure 10-7) when she looked at PCR products made from using the blood of three patients suffering from the viral disease, from her own blood, and from a leaf from her petunia plant.

You advise your friend not to panic, as you believe she is missing an important control. Which one of these choices is the best control for clarifying the results of her assay. Explain your choice.

Your friend works at the Centers for Disease Control and has discovered a brand new virus that has been recently introduced into the human population. She has just developed a new assay that allows her to detect the virus using PCR products made from the blood of infected patients. The assay utilizes primers in the PCR reaction that hybridize to sequences in the viral genome. Your friend is distraught because of the result she obtained (see Figure 10-7) when she looked at PCR products made from using the blood of three patients suffering from the viral disease, from her own blood, and from a leaf from her petunia plant. You advise your friend not to panic, as you believe she is missing an important control. Which one of these choices is the best control for clarifying the results of her assay. Explain your choice. (a) A PCR reaction using blood from a patient that is newly infected but does not yet show symptoms. (b) A PCR reaction using blood from a dog. (c) A PCR reaction from an uninfected person. (d) Repeating the experiment she?s already done with a higher concentration of primers. (e) Repeating the experiments she?s already done with a new tube of polymerase.

Explanation / Answer

The three patients has three bands, while her own blood has 2 bands. If an uninfected person also has 2 bands, then the reaction still works, because the third band is the one detecting the virus. So, the missing control is C.

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