Tab. 7. Mycoplasma detection methods, their sensitivity, and advantages and disadvantages.

Technique	Sensitivity	Pro	Con
Direct DNA stain	Low	Fast, cheap	Can be difficult to interpret
Indirect DNA stain with indicator cells	High	Easy to interpret because contamination amplified	Indirect and thus more time-consuming
Broth and agar culture	High	Sensitive	Slow (minimum 28d), can be difficult to interpret, problems of sample handling, lack of standards for calibration
PCR (endpoint and real-time-PCR)	High	Fast	Requires optimization, can miss low level infections, no distinction between live and dead mycoplasma
Nested PCR	High	Fast	More sensitive than direct PCR, but more likely to give false positives
ELISA	Moderate	Fast, reproducible	Limited range of species detected, reproducible
PCR ELISA	High	Fast, reproducible	May give false positives
Autoradiography	Moderate	Fast	Can be difficult to interpret
Immunostaining	Moderate	Fast	Can be difficult to interpret

This table was combined from (Garner et al., 2000, Young et al., 2010, Lawrence et al., 2010, Volokhov et al., 2011). Other less routinely used methods include microarrays, massive parallel sequencing, mycoplasma enzyme based methods, and recombinant cell lines.