Researchers Present Improved Direct PCR-based Technology for GE Plants Screening

Researchers from the Centre of Biotechnology of Borj Cedria in Tunisia established a standard direct PCR workflow for timely gene detection assay and screening of genetically engineered (GE) plants. The results are published in Transgenic Research.

GE plants are widely developed for various practical and fundamental purposes. Thus, several methods have been developed for the detection and quantification of GE crops, but are still labor-intensive and expensive. Thus, Anis Ben-Amar and Ahmed Mliki developed a direct PCR technology using a regular Taq polymerase without prior DNA purification over a wide range of plant species. With the new method, only a small amount of the fresh tissue is necessary to amplify the target gene sequences successfully, leading to high-quality sequencing profiles. GE plant screening also confirmed the integration of the reporter gene and selectable marker into the plant genome.

Based on the findings, the improved direct PCR approach provides a powerful tool for large-scale PCR-based gene detection making DNA purification irrelevant.