Abstract
Nucleic acid amplification methods, such as the polymerase chain reaction, are having a significant impact in the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Each of these methods uses an enzymatic replication of key regions of an organism's nucleic acid targets, such as the genome, rRNA, mRNA, or plasmid. Several methods and the diseases they are used to detect are described in the article. Techniques include PCR, AMPLICOR, AMPLIPREP, transcription-mediated amplification, thermophilic strand displacement amplification, nucleic acid sequence-based amplification, and the ligase chain reaction.