The microbiologist receives a sputum specimen that upon preliminary Gram staining review of direct smear, contains numerous squamous epithelial cells and an excessive amount of contami-nating normal flora. Based on the microbiologists knowledge, the microbiologist rejects the spe-cimen and requests a new sample. The physician insists that the microbiologist culture the sample as received. The microbiologist should:
a. disregard the physicians request and dis-card the specimen.
b. notify their supervisor and write-up the physician.
c. set-up the culture as ordered noting the lack of specimen integrity that may com-promise culture results.
d. the microbiologist should have not called the physician and process the sample as received.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae are present in the vaginal compartment with nonpathogenic commensal Neisseria spp. When the patient's system begins to attack the pathogenic species, some of the cells autolyze releasing their genetic material into the environment. Other Neisseria species are then capable of taking up the DNA from the organisms that have autolyzed altering their genetic makeup and changing their pili protein structure. This process can be described as:
a. competent cells being transformed by ge-netic recombination.
b. bacteria ingesting DNA and using the in-formation for transcription.
c. mutation of the pathogenic organisms re-sulting in enhanced infection.
d. transformation and genetic recombination resulting in expression of new pili proteins to evade the immune system.
After PCR, the amplification control has failed to yield a product. What should you do?
a. Report out Indeterminate
b. Report out Negative because there was no amplification from the sample
c. Check the original DNA or RNA prepara-tion. If it is adequate, repeat the amplifi-cation. If not, re-isolate the nucleic acid.
d. Repeat it using a higher concentration of amplification control in the reaction.
The enzyme that has the ability to synthesize DNA from ribonucleic acid (RNA) is called:
a. DNA polymerase.
b. RNAse.
c. helicase.
d. reverse transcriptase.
Which of the following steps are crucial for the success of a nucleic acid amplification test, such as PCR?
a. Nucleic acid purification
b. Fluorescent resonance energy transfer (FRET)
c. Melting temperature analysis
d. Nucleic acid sequencing
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