New Research from Palestine Korea Biotechnology Center at Palestine Polytechnic University

 

A group of researchers from Palestine Korea Biotechnology Center at the PPU published a scientific paper in Heliyon Microbiology Journal on ways to improve the performance of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique, which is widely used to detect DNA for molecular diagnosis purposes and find out about pathogenic microbes.

The team consisting of  Diyala Shatleh and Asmaa Al-Tamimi, led by Dr. Yaqoub Al-Ashhab, made several modifications to the conventional PCR technique in order to raise its sensitivity in detecting the targeted DNA and develop a modified form of this technique as one of the alternative solutions in developing countries laboratories, which usually lacks highly sensitive diagnostic techniques such as real-time polymerase chain reaction (real-time PCR), depending on the presence of complex laser detectors and highly expensive fluorescent detectors. The researchers obtained results that doubled the sensitivity of the normal PCR reaction to more than 100 times, reaching the sensitivity of the Real time PCR, which helps to detect pathogens, even in very light quantities. It is noteworthy that the developed solution can be applied to detect various types of pathogens.

 

Department of Public Relations & Media