We propose a facile fluorometric system for detection of gene mutations using graphene oxide (GO). A fluorescent probe DNA anneals to a specific mutant gene and is degraded by the 5'→ 3' exonuclease activity of Taq polymerase during PCR, and the released fluorophore retains fluorescence after addition of GO without quenching.

Given the scale of ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, need for reliable, scalable testing, and likelihood reagent shortages, especially in resource-poor settings, we have developed an RT-qPCR assay that relies on alternative to conventional viral reverse transcriptases, a thermostable transcriptase/DNA polymerase (RTX) (Ellefson et al., 2016). Here show RTX performs comparably other assays sanctioned b...

DNA that encodes elements for degenerate replication events by use of artificial nucleobases offers a versatile approach to manipulating sequences for applications in biotechnology. We have designed a family of artificial nucleobases that are capable of assuming multiple hydrogen bonding orientations through internal bond rotations to provide a means for degenerate molecular recognition. Incorp...

The amplification efficiencies of several polymerase chain reaction (PCR) enzymes were compared using real-time quantitative PCR with SYBR Green I detection. Amplification data collected during the exponential phase of PCR are highly reproducible, and PCR enzyme performance comparisons based upon efficiency measurements are considerably more accurate than those based on endpoint analysis. DNA p...

The introduction of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) into the forensic field has greatly extended the ability to analyze DNA from small or degraded samples. However, one significant problem with PCR analysis is the sensitivity of Taq Polymerase to inhibitors found in many substrates commonly encountered with evidentiary materials. We hypothesize that the most problematic of these compounds inter...

Formation of deletions by recombination between short direct repeats is thought to involve either a break-join or a copy-choice process. The key step of the latter is slippage of the replication machinery between the repeats. We report that the main replicase of Escherichia coli, DNA polymerase III holoenzyme, slips between two direct repeats of 27 bp that flank an inverted repeat of approximat...

BACKGROUND It has been hypothesised that vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene polymorphisms may influence both the risk of cancer occurrence and prognosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS The distribution of VDR Taq I polymorphism in 64 patients with OSCC was determined by polymerase chain reaction based restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and compared with that of 87 healthy controls. RESULTS T...