Electrical Properties of an Individual Chicken Infectious Laryngotracheitis Virus

Over the past few years, virus detection techniques have become increasingly important because of the frequent occurrence of new pathogenic virus strains. At present, there are two well-established diagnostic techniques for viruses: immunoassay and DNA-/RNA-based methods. Immunoassay, considered the gold standard, uses either direct immunofluorescent assay or membrane enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to first isolate the virus and then characterize it using serological or other molecular biological tools. Typical drawbacks for immunoassay include poor specificity and low sensitivity. By comparison, DNA-/RNA-based methods such as reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction assays are much more specific and sensitive. These methods, however, are typically very time consuming since the protocol requires a series of DNA/RNA isolation, concentration, and gel electrophoresis.