Several million SNPs have been identified and are available in the public databases. For most, no effect on gene function or expression is known. “Functional polymorphisms” refers to SNPs to which a putative effect on gene function or expression is attributed and implies that they are “non-silent” variations located in regions that are coding, regulatory, splice sites, or untranslated regions t...

OBJECTIVES 1) To correlate the methylation status of the O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter to its gene and protein expression levels in glioblastoma and 2) to determine the most reliable method for using MGMT to predict the response to adjuvant therapy in patients with glioblastoma. BACKGROUND The MGMT gene is epigenetically silenced by promoter hypermethylation in glioma...

Resistance of influenza viruses to antiviral drugs can emerge following medication or may result from natural variation. Two classes of anti-influenza virus drugs targeting either the M2 protein (amantadine and rimantadine) or neuraminidase (NA; oseltamivir and zanamivir) are currently licensed. These drugs are expected to be important in controlling the early stages of a potential pandemic. In...

OBJECTIVE The current manuscript aims to determine the prevalence, duration and bacterial diversity of bacteraemia following dental extractions using conventional culture-dependent methods and 16S rDNA pyrosequencing. METHODS The study group included 8 patients undergoing dental extractions under general anaesthesia. Peripheral venous blood samples were collected at baseline, 30 seconds and 1...

DNA methylation status in the CpG sites of promoter regions in cancer-related genes, such as PTCH, has traditionally been investigated using either dye-terminator sequencing or methylation-specific PCR. We aimed to study the PTCH gene promoter methylation in gynecological cancers, with a method that gives a quantitative measure of the methylation status of the promoter region of the studied gen...

Drug resistance gene mutations in Hepatitis B virus (HBV) are the main reason for failure of currently used therapeutic nucleoside analogues. Two methods-Pyrosequencing and Sanger sequencing, are most commonly used for HBV genotyping and identification of its mutations, but their advantages of the two methods are undefined. Herein, the two methods were used to identify the HBV genotypes and dru...

Conventional blood culturing using automated instrumentation with phenotypic identification requires a significant amount of time to generate results. This study investigated the speed and accuracy of results generated using PCR and pyrosequencing compared to the time required to obtain Gram stain results and final culture identification for cases of culture-confirmed bloodstream infections. Re...