Towards the routine application of nucleic acid technology for avian disease diagnosis

The use of nucleic acid technology (polymerase chain reaction, probing, restriction fragment analysis and nucleotide sequencing) in the study of avian diseases has largely been confined to fundamental analysis and retrospective studies. More recently these approaches have been applied to diagnosis and what one might call real-time epidemiological studies on chickens and turkeys. At the heart of these approaches is the identification and characterisation of pathogens based on their genetic material, RNA or DNA. Among the objectives has been the detection of pathogens quickly combined with the simultaneous identification of serotype, subtype or genotype. Nucleic acid sequencing also gives a degree of characterisation unmatched by other approaches. In this paper we describe the use of nucleic acid technology for the diagnosis and epidemiology of infectious bronchitis virus, turkey rhinotracheitis virus (avian pneumovirus) and Newcastle disease virus.