Includes bibliographical references and index.

Real-time polymerase chain reaction / Mickey Williams -- Thermostable enzymes used in polymerase chain reaction / Sudip K. Rakshit -- Inventing molecular beacons / Fred Russell Kramer, Salvatore A.E. Marras, and Sanjay Tyagi -- Rapid polymerase chain reaction and melting analysis / Carl T. Wittwer, Randy P. Rasmussen, and Kirk M. Ririe -- Polymerase chain reaction and fluorescence chemistries : deoxyribonucleic acid incarnate / Ben Sowers -- Analysis of microribonucleic acid expression by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction / Vladimir Benes ... [et al.] -- Miniaturized polymerase chain reaction for quantitative clinical diagnostics / Melissa Mariani, Lin Chen, and Philip J. Day -- The road from qualitative to quantitative assay : what is next? / Michael W. Pfaffl -- Taking control of the polymerase chain reaction / Tania Nolan, Tanya Novak, and Jim Huggett --

Polymerase chain reaction-based methods for the detection of solid tumor cancer cells for clinical diagnostic and prognostic assays / Susan A. Burchill -- Polymerase chain reaction and infectious diseases / Jim Huggett -- Polymerase chain reaction and respiratory viruses / Ian M. Mackay -- Polymerase chain reaction and severe acute respiratory syndrome / Weijun Chen and Yang Huanming -- The MMR vaccine, measles virus, and autism : a cautionary tale / Stephen A. Bustin -- Noninvasive prenatal diagnosis using cell-free fetal nucleic acids in maternal plasma / Y.M. Dennis Lo -- Polymerase chain reaction-based analyses of nucleic acids from archival material / Ulrich Lehmann -- Microarrays and quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction / Elisa Wurmbach -- Polymerase chain reaction in the detection of genetic variation / Pui-Yan Kwok -- Polymerase chain reaction : a blessing and a curse for ancient deoxyribonucleic acid research / Michael Hofreiter and Holger Römpler.