Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is increasingly used for point-of-care pathogen detection. Which feature distinguishes LAMP from conventional PCR?

• A It requires a thermocycler cycling through three temperatures
• B Amplification proceeds at a single constant temperature using strand-displacing DNA polymerase ✓
• C It amplifies RNA targets without any reverse transcription step
• D It requires fluorescently labelled probes specific for each target sequence

Explanation

LAMP uses four to six primers recognizing six to eight regions of the target and Bst DNA polymerase with strand displacement activity, allowing amplification at a constant temperature around 60 to 65 degrees Celsius without a thermocycler. Detection can be by turbidity, fluorescence or colour change. RNA targets still require a reverse transcription step, and labelled probes are not essential for readout.

Reference: Ananthanarayan and Paniker's Textbook of Microbiology, 11th ed.

High-yield for: NEET PGINI-CETNExTFMGEUSMLEPLABMRCP

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