B. Synthesis of competitor template RNA
The competitor template RNA is synthesized in vitro from the plasmid pHAV6 with SP6
RNA polymerase. The competitor RNA harbors a 63 base deletion in the region
amplified by the PCR primer pair. This enables separation of the PCR product
originating from wild-type viral RNA from the product generated from the competitor
RNA in the same reaction tube. The design and construction of the plasmid pHAV6 was
described in detail elsewhere (1).