nPCR Universal phytoplasma – 96 tests

A number of universal PCR primers have been designed that allow amplification of the 16S rRNA gene of any known phytoplasma. The most commonly used primers are the P1/P7 (Deng and Hiruki, 1991; Schneider et al., 1995) and R16F2n/R16R2 (Lee et al., 1993; Gundersen and Lee, 1996) primer pairs, which are used in this PCR Uniphy kit. The primer pair used for the 1^st amplification amplifies a PCR product that contains the entire 16S rRNA gene as well as the 16S/23S rRNA spacer region. This primer pair was used by Smart et al. (1996) to amplify the 16S/23S rRNA spacer region of 10 different plytoplasma groups. Gundersen and Lee (1996) evaluated the R16F2n/R16R2 primers with representative phytoplasmas for 10 distinct 16 rRNA groups. Since then, both primer pairs have been used to characterize numerous new phytoplasma groups.