Due to the neurotropic nature of rabies virus, infection results in enormous viral replication in the CNS in the final stage of the disease that leads to massive antigen and viral genome concentrations. This makes detection of viral antigen in brain tissue by tests such as the FAT or the dRIT [7] very robust and relatively simple to perform, and these have become rapid gold standard tests. As for detection of viral genome, approaches are now available which process multiple specimens from nucleic acid extraction through to genetic typing, with significantly reduced risks of contamination. In addition, the use of TaqMan RT-PCR or similar technologies on robotics platforms, allow for rapid largescale rabies detection, typing and quantification in real time [32, 31, 51] . The development of PCR-based methods (Box 2) provided an alternative method for post mortem rabies diagnosis [26] , and the possibility of ante mortem diagnosis of human rabies [52] . RT-PCR methods invariably involve multiple transfers of nucleic acids between different tubes. Coupled with the high sensitivity of PCR methodologies, any small amount of contam- Figure 1 . Amplification of rabies virus RNA by reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP). For each reaction 1 mg RNA, prepared using TriZol (Invitrogen) from normal mouse brain (1A, circles; 1B 2) or infected mouse brain (1A, triangles; 1B, +) was added to a reaction mixture containing all six primers at concentrations indicated in Table 1 ination will undoubtedly produce false-positive results. Attempts have been made to adapt RT-PCR to reduce manipulations thereby reducing contamination risks. The visualisation of PCR products by gel electrophoresis exposes facilities and operators to large quantities of amplified material and thus many adaptations have been directed at replacing this step. New and improved rapid diagnostic tools for rabies using Taqman technology have been developed that avoid cross-contamination due to the closed tube nature of the test [29, 30] . A further benefit of RT-PCR has been to enable practical molecular characterization of rabies viruses [26] that has added significantly to the understanding of virus evolution and epidemiology. This approach has superseded the use of monoclonal antibodies for typing and characterising new strains of rabies virus. This has provided the evidence to support the delineation of lyssaviruses into genotypes [53] (Box 2) and was used for the classification of another four putative members of the genus [54, 55] . Also, this technique was a prerequisite for the understanding of the molecular biology of lyssaviruses [56] and underpinned future developments in rabies diagnosis and prevention. It is likely that in the future microarray techniques in combination with sophisticated bioinformatics and arrays with a hierarchical set of probes will provide an alternative to rapid virus discovery and characterisation.