Overall, the 5nuclease assays were more sensitive than
the conventional PCR assays (1,000- to 10,000-fold) and, by
comparing conventional plating techniques with the duplex
5 nuclease assays, the detection limits of the nuclease assays were
found to range from 0.75 to 1.25 CFU/ml (Table 4). RNase-free
and RNase-treated samples showed identical results demonstrating
that contaminating RNA does not disturb the assays.