Quantification of porcine follicle-stimulating hormone receptor messenger ribonucleic acid by reverse transcription-competitive polymerase chain reaction.

An easy and reliable method was developed for construction and quantification of competitive templates, which shared the same sequence as the amplified target DNA except for a 20-bp insertion in the middle by recombinant polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Among the advantages of competitive PCR is that any predictable or unpredictable variable that affects amplification has the same effect on both target and competitor species and that the final ratio of amplified products reflects exactly the initial targets. The utilization of a thermostable reverse transcriptase in the RT step was proposed to overcome the problem of the efficiency of target cDNA synthesis. In addition, to obtain reliable measurements, it was recommended to perform four PCR with amounts of competitive template flanking the concentration of the target mRNA.