I've heard that LAMP could be a good alternative to PCR for DNA strand amplification and detection because the equipment required is cheaper, more portable, and the amplification is faster since all happens at a single temperature.
Since this system has clear advantages, I'm curious what are the downsides that prevent it from completely overtaking PCR/qPCR?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5862059/ mentions some disadvantages:
However, this technique has some limitations. Complexity of multiple primers’ designs for multiplication of new gene regions and selecting the suitable regions in the gene sequence for efficient design of primers, complicated product having cauliflower-like structures with different sizes, lack of commercial kits based on LAMP technique and complexity of this method mechanism are some of its drawbacks limiting its popularity among the researchers; and it not as common as PCR-based method.
but they just don't seem that important compared to the large benefits for diagnostic usage.
For example, from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5zi2P4lggw I understand that more primers are needed, but is it that hard to "just create a few more primers"? Aren't those just deterministically determined from the target DNA of interest in this case?
I can see why the cauliflower structures matter for certain applications, e.g. I guess those messy strands are not going to go through an Oxford Nanopore pore for sequencing, but do they matter when we just want to know if the DNA of interest is present or not?
Related articles:
- https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_a_PCR-RT_and_loop-mediated_isothermal_amplification_LAMP
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22051073
I later learnt that there are other isothermal amplification amplification schemes out there as well, maybe I knew about those I would have asked a more generic isothermal question:
- RPA which is apparently used in Abbot ID NOW system according to this and is being used for Covid-19 diagnostics.
- HDA
- NASBA
- NEAR
- Strand Displacement Amplification