Glupczynski Y
Département de Bactériologie. Hôpital André Vésale, Montigny-le-Tilleul.
Rev Med Brux. 1995 May-Jun;16(3):119-24.
Since its introduction a decade ago, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been largely utilized as a powerful research tool in microbiology. More recently, the simplification and the automatization of the PCR coupled with the recent development of several other nucleic amplification techniques has brought the introduction of molecular biology into the routine clinical laboratory. The PCR techniques offer new exciting perspectives in the field of microbiology in terms of clinical diagnosis and there are at least three areas in which this technology is expected to have a significant impact in the clinical microbiology laboratory over the next decade : 1) direct detection and identification of organisms that are slow-growing or those currently lacking a system for in vitro cultivation; 2) identification of genotypic markers of microbial resistance to specific antibiotics; 3) direct identification of microorganisms based upon amplification and sequence analysis of common sequence elements. This review also briefly discusses the various problems that must be overcome prior to routine use of PCR in the clinical laboratory.
自从十年前聚合酶链反应（PCR）问世以来，它在很大程度上一直被用作微生物学中一种强大的研究工具。最近，PCR的简化和自动化，再加上其他几种核酸扩增技术的最新发展，已将分子生物学引入常规临床实验室。PCR技术在临床诊断方面为微生物学领域提供了令人兴奋的新前景，在未来十年里，这项技术有望在临床微生物学实验室产生重大影响的领域至少有三个：1）直接检测和鉴定生长缓慢的生物体或目前缺乏体外培养系统的生物体；2）鉴定微生物对特定抗生素耐药性的基因型标记；3）基于常见序列元件的扩增和序列分析直接鉴定微生物。本文还简要讨论了在临床实验室将PCR用于常规检测之前必须克服的各种问题。
