Evolution of nucleic acid extraction methods and its role in development of complex human diagnostic solutions with special reference to tuberculosis: A review

Nucleic acid extraction from biological sources has evolved with time and is currently one of the most important contributors to the development of modern human molecular diagnostics. Pure and sufficient quantity of DNA and RNA from limited quantity of cells, which may be fresh or archived, holds key to successful detection of source and cause of many diseases. The challenges of cell disruption to release nucleic acids and the wide range of strategies applied to purify them by removing various enzyme inhibitors are discussed. The demographic spread of the disease of tuberculosis, hurdles faced during transportation of the clinical samples for nucleic acid extraction of Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogen and different detection technologies supported by the extracted pathogen nucleic acid are reviewed.