QUANTITATIVE ASPECTS OF THE MUTANT ANALYSIS BY PCR AND RESTRICTION ENZYME CLEAVAGE (MAPREC)

Quantitation of virus revertants by PCR and restriction enzyme cleavag e may give nonlinear results and, in some cases, produce artifacts cau sed by nucleotide misincorporation and heteroduplex formation, occurri ng during PCR. Modifications of the procedure allowed us to overcome t hese problems and develop a highly sensitive and reliable method of mu tant quantitation. This procedure can be used to assess the quality of live vaccines and to study heterogeneity of viral and bacterial popul ations.