Digital PCR (dPCR)

Digital PCR is a highly sensitive technology in which the sample is partitioned into thousands of small compartments wherein the amplification reaction occurs. Each compartment contains all the necessary reagents for the PCR, which follows the same principle of a real-time PCR. The results of each partition are then read individually, and a Poisson distribution is applied to obtain a quantification of the target detected against the number of partitions observed. This leads to a more robust method that is sensitive to low concentrations of the target and resilient to high levels of inhibitors, since they’ll be distributed among the partitions, which makes it particularly suitable for analyzing food samples.