NASBA (molecular biology)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Nucleic Acid Sequence Based Amplification (NASBA) is a method in molecular biology which is used to amplify RNA sequences. NASBA was developed by J Compton in 1991, who defined it as "a primer-dependent technology that can be used for the continuous amplification of nucleic acids in a single mixture at one temperature." Immediately after the invention of NASBA it was used for the rapid diagnosis and quantification of HIV-1 in patient sera. Although RNA can also be amplified by PCR using a reverse transcriptase (in order to synthesize a complementary DNA strand as a template), NASBA's main advantage is that it works at isothermic conditions - usually at a constant temperature of 41°C. NASBA has been introduced into medical diagnostics, where it has been shown to give quicker results than PCR, and it can also be more sensitive.... Mehr