Evaluation of molecular-beacon, TaqMan, and fluorescence resonance energy transfer probes for detection of antibiotic resistance-conferring single nucleotide Polymorphisms in mixed Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA extracts

The ability of fluorescence resonance energy transfer, molecular-beacon, and TaqMan probes to detect single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the presence of a wild-type allele was evaluated using drug resistance-conferring SNPs in mixed Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA. It was found that both the absolute quantity and the ratio of allelles determine the detection sensitivity of the probe systems.