The Next Generation
TMA is the next generation of nucleic acid amplification technology, and is available today with the GEN-PROBE
® AMPLIFIED™ products —
APTIMA® Combo 2™ for Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonnorhoeae,
Amp CT Assay for
Chlamydia trachomatis and
MTD Test for
Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
TMA is an RNA transcription amplification system using two enzymes to drive the reaction: RNA polymerase and reverse transcriptase. TMA is isothermal; the entire reaction is performed at the same temperature in a water bath or heat block. This is in contrast to other amplification reactions such as PCR or LCR that require a thermal cycler instrument to rapidly change the temperature to drive the reaction.
TMA can amplify either DNA or RNA, and produces RNA amplicon, in contrast to most other nucleic acid amplification methods that only produce DNA. TMA has very rapid kinetics resulting in a billion fold amplification within 15-30 minutes. TMA has been combined with the GEN-PROBE Hybridization Protection Assay (HPA) detection technique in a single tube format. There are no wash steps, and no amplicon is ever transferred out of the tube, which simplifies the procedure and reduces the potential of contamination.
