Back to Retrovirology

Reverse transcriptase (RT) assays have proven to be exceedingly sensitive and useful in screening cell lines and cell-derived biologicals for endogenous retroviruses, novel retroviruses that arise through recombination events, or contaminating retroviral sequences that cannot be detected in infectivity assays. Because RT is ubiquitous within the Retroviridae family, these assays can be used to detect retroviruses that are capable of infecting cells from a variety of species. BioReliance offers the classic methods to detect RT activity, using tritiated thymidine triphosphate (3HTTP), as well as the product-enhanced reverse transcriptase (PERT) assays, which use a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification step.