Evaluation of highly conserved hsp65-specific nested PCR primers for diagnosing Mycobacterium tuberculosis

To evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of a new nested set of primers designed for the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex targeting a highly conserved heat shock protein gene (hsp65).

The nested primers were designed using multiple sequence alignment assuming the nucleotide sequence of the M. tuberculosis H37Rv hsp65 genome as base. Multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium species along with other non-mycobacterial and fungal species were included to evaluate the specificity of M. tuberculosis hsp65 gene-specific primers.

The sensitivity of the primers was determined using serial 10-fold dilutions, and was 100% as shown by the bands in the case of M. tuberculosis complex. None of the other non M. tuberculosis complex bacterial and fungal species yielded any band on nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The first round of amplification could amplify 0.3 ng of the template DNA, while nested PCR could detect 0.3 pg.

The present hsp65-specific primers have been observed to be sensitive, specific and cost-effective, without requiring interpretation of biochemical tests, real-time PCR, sequencing or high-performance liquid chromatography. These primer sets do not have the drawbacks associated with those protocols that target insertion sequence 6110, 16S rDNA, rpoB, recA and MPT 64.