Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification System (LAMP): A Comprehensive Review with Special Reference to Veterinary Medicine

Abstract

Loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a simple, rapid, inexpensive, sensitive and specific nucleic acid amplification assay at a constant temperature in water bath/heat block by using Bst DNA polymerase. There is a need for an inexpensive, robust diagnostic technique as an alternative to PCR and qPCR assays. The LAMP assay is found to be 10-100 fold more sensitive than the PCR. This technique uses four specially designed primers capable of recognizing six different regions in the target DNA so that the specificity is extremely high. There are several detections methods that are available for one-pot closed tube amplification reactions to minimize/control the carryover contamination during the opening of amplified tubes. LAMP technique is employed in the clinical diagnosis of pathogens including viruses and other applications namely single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) typing, inspection of meat adulteration, and detection of GMOs, sex determination, detection of pesticides, tumor detection and quantification of template DNA. As a closed-tube LAMP method, the LAMP can be used as a field diagnostic tool in low resource settings where the diagnostic testing may be impractical. This review emphasis on the principle of LAMP, methods of detection, modifications of LAMP, advantages over routine molecular diagnostics and its applications in veterinary medicine.