Molecular Biology Techniques of Pivotal Importance in Veterinary Diagnostics

The field of molecular diagnostics in veterinary sciences is rapidly growing. The advances in the field of biotechnology have significantly contributed to the development of novel, rapid, and precise molecular diagnostic assays for several animal diseases that can ultimately be used in point-of-decision making during an outbreak. A range of molecular biological techniques of different specificity and sensitivity are available to facilitate the rapid and precise diagnosis of animal diseases. The choice for the molecular technique dependents up on the aim, availability of reagents, disease, knowledge about the test, and its limitations. The quick detection of pathogens and their characteristics would allow for accurate decision-making and implementation of control measures such as appropriate therapy, vaccination, and biosecurity procedures to control the disease outbreaks. In practice, rapid diagnosis using the molecular techniques makes a strong collaboration between the veterinarians in the laboratory and the field practitioners. In the recent times, numerous molecular biological techniques have been identified for the detection and characterization of pathogens in the field of veterinary science. Nowadays, PCR and real-time PCR have been the most commonly used technology for the detection of pathogens that are slow or difficult to isolate in the clinical microbiology laboratory, molecular detection of antimicrobial resistance genes, and microbial load determination. Although, some of the new technologies such as liquid-phase hybridization, DNA/protein microarray, isothermal nucleic acid amplification methods etc. have high sensitivity and specificity but, these tests are not frequently used for clinical veterinary diagnosis. This book chapter describes the basic principles and applications of recently developed molecular biological techniques used for the veterinary clinical diagnosis.