The research group led by Prof. YU Jun and HU Songnian at Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully developed a real-time quantitative PCR reagent kit that can detect Influenza A virus H1N1 with high sensitivity and specificity.

By analyzing the conserved and specified nucleotide sites in newly sequenced H1N1 virus genome, researchers designed TaqMan probes and PCR primers whose sensitivity was validated and compared with the whole synthetic H1N1 genome segment. The specificity of these probes and primers was validated through detecting other types of influenza virus sequences. The detection kit can be used for genotyping on Influenza A, Influenza B, H5 subtype, H1 subtype and the newly emerged H1N1 viruses. In particular, this kit can detect four different sites of H1N1 virus sequences.