Amplification of exon 7 of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene using polymerase chain reaction (PCR)

Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive fibrotic lung disease of unknown cause. IPF is the most common manifestation of telomere-rnediated disorder where it is a syndrome of telomere shortening due to mutation of TERT. A set of primer for amplification of exon 7 of TERT was successfully designed. The size of PCR product was 247 basepair. The result showed absence of mutation in both samples. Future studies can be conducted to people who have risk to get IPF or people with IPF by using the successfully designed primers. This set of primers can also be used to screening IPF, thus will give better prevalence of IPF among Malaysian population.