what is RT-PCR ?
ARC: Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is used to monitor minimal residual disease and offers the greatest sensitivity of all testing procedures, being capable of detecting up to 1 bad cell in 1 million white blood cells. A qualitative RT-PCR can give simple test information about breakpoints and the degree of remission whereas a quantitative RT-PCR can monitor minimal residual disease. For RT-PCR, RNA is isolated from blood or marrow samples and reverse transcribed into its copy, cDNA. The cDNA is then subjected to PCR amplification using primers specific for either the major or minor breakpoints.
RT-PCR is a technique which couples reverse transcription (RT) of an RNA template with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the resulting cDNA. RT-PCR is a sensitive and versatile method which can be used to determine the presence of a transcript, to estimate expression levels and to clone cDNA products without the necessity of constructing and screening a cDNA library.
