In a major breakthrough,Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre(GBRC) scientists developed a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique for faster detection of theOmicronvariant of coronavirus.
The technique involves cDNA (complementary DNA a copy of messenger RNA through reverse transcript) prepared from RNA isolated from the viral sample. It is followed by the conventional PCR which provides fast results in comparison to Sequencing of whole virus using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and also provides cost-effective technique to scrutinize samples in remote labs.