The microbe's genome encodes its virulence, for example for Bacillus anthracis, the genetic components responsible for the Anthrax disease phenotype distinguish its grnome from the other Bacillus species.

Scientists have used colony forming units and several days of culture to determine the presence of the pathogenes, real-time PCR generates results in much less time than culture based assays.

Applied Biosystems has developed a technology called: TaqMan-based real-time PCR assays. Should customers design their own microbial probes or Applied Biosystems offers to design probes as well?

Hello,
I must say for B. anthrax it look an usefull option, but this is not a common pathogen. Often identical of smililar virulence genes are found in different species. Therfore developing primers is not as easy as it looks. A additional problem with PCR detection is that you may know the bug but you don't know which antbiotic you have to use.