EVALUATION OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION CONTROL PROTOCOL AS A REQUIREMENT FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE IN A MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY

Abstract

Clinical laboratories that perform molecular diagnostic tests are great allies in healthcare practices, especially in the current post-COVID-19 pandemic wold scenario, participating  in assistance not only with diagnosis but also in monitoring the health status on individuals. In such laboratories analytical methodologies are developed primarily for nucleic acids and, among these, the real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) stands out due to its enormous versatility, sensitivity and specificity. However, it has an important fragility: the easyness with which it can be contaminated with amplification products (“amplicons”)  from previous reactions carried out in the same environmental space or even with genetic materials from other samples, calibrators and controls. The unwanted presence of thes DNA/RNA molecules has great potential to negativily impact the entire workflow in a Molecular Biology Laboratory and, therefore, must be correctly monitored with protocols to prevent it from happening. Such protocols must be part of the laboratory good pratices standards. Given this, the main objective of this present study is to demostrate the importance of implementing periodic environmental contamination control protocol throughout the entire technical workflow of a Molecular Biology Laboratory (MBL).