One of the most heralded developments
in basic science to reach clinical application
in recent years has been the Polymerase
Chain Reaction (PCR).
PCR has been applied in various areas
of clinical medicine including rapid diagnosis
of viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitic
disease, the diagnosis and prediction of inherited
disease, the detection of an association
between certain viruses and specific cancers,
the detection of organ transplant rejection and
HLA subtyping. In basic research PCR is
useful in identification of point mutation,
deletion, insertions, rearrangements, amplifications
and translocations
