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NEW LABORATORY METHODS - DNA IMMUNOLOGY
Citation:
Haugland, R A. AND S J. Vesper. NEW LABORATORY METHODS - DNA IMMUNOLOGY. Presented at Expert Indoor Mycology Workshop, Asilomar, CA, July 31, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
To understand children's risks from exposure to molds in their environment and to explore risk management options for mitigating those risks.
Description:
Indoor fungi present potential, although as yet not fully defined, health risks to the occupants of heavily contaminated buildings due to their production of allergens, and a wide range of mycotoxins. A better understanding of the health risks posed by these organisms will require accurate, quantitative estimates of the occurrence of individual species or groups of species with common allergenic and/or biologically active compound production characteristics as well as the development of mechanistic biomarkers of human exposure.
The same culture-based, microscopic and chemical methods have been used for decades with few improvements for identifying fungi and measuring their occurrence in environmental and clinical samples. Molecular technologies now offer the opportunity to provide more rapid, accurate and standardized measurements of fungi and fungal biomarkers. This presentation will review recent nucleic acid and immunology based methods that have been developed for the detection of indoor fungi with emphasis on real time PCR and ELISA methods, developed by the U.S. EPA, Office of Research and Development, for quantifying the occurrence of and human exposure to these organisms.