PCR is a very powerful tool but also has some drawbacks. In particular, the need for a thermal cycler is a major limitation if you have to buy it upfront (as in a newly established laboratory). Other methods are available, such as NASBA and LAMP, that use simple thermostats to work.
Why is PCR still so popular?
Are there some specific characters that make it superior or is there a historical reason? (perhaps it was the first molecular method and it was introduced before the isothermal alternatives and it is now unfeasible to move to other systems...)
Thank you
I'm not nearly as familiar with NASBA or LAMP as I am with PCR, but from my understanding PCR is more versatile than other methods. So, while a thermocycler can be very expensive, depending on the needs of the lab, it could be considered a good investment due to this versatility.
I also think that PCR may also have gotten a boost in popularity/notoriety with the more general public by being featured so heavily in modern true crime media. I think that more people may have heard of PCR than NASBA or LAMP. It's possible this could have influenced the decisions made by people less familiar with the various technologies available.
Similarly, the criminal justice-related applications of PCR could have lead to an increase in funding/resources available to those who adopted this technology.
(Disclaimer: these are just guesses informed by my personal experience!)
From personal experience I know that PCR is easier to handle than LAMP when it comes to establishing in-house assays because you are only dealing with two primers instead of six. Additionally, creating primers in silico is easier for PCR. As for costs: If you only want to perform endpoint PCR the costs for a thermal cycler and a reliable incubation block are the same.
According to my experience, PCR is very cheaper than other methods, you need only buy a thermal cycler and pcr master mix. Then, you can find each gene regions by specific primers. In addition, thermal cycler enables you to search all genomic regions besides, MLST, MLSA, sequence analysis and others. In this respect, PCR is not a specific method, that enables to analysis genome-based.
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