Bacillus anthracis is the potentially lethal etiologic agent of anthrax disease, and is a significant concern in the realm of biodefense. One of the cornerstones of an effective biodefense strategy is the ability to detect infectious agents with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity in the context of a complex sample background. The nature of the B. anthracis genome, however, renders spe...

Nucleic acid (NA) extraction is a basic step for genetic analysis, from scientific research to diagnostic and forensic applications. It aims at preparing samples its application with biomolecular technologies such as isothermal non-isothermal amplification, hybridization, electrophoresis, Sanger sequencing next-generation sequencing. Multiple steps are involved in NA collection raw samples, inc...

foot and mouth disease (fmd) is a highly contagious viral disease of ruminant which causes fever and postule on mouth, hoof and teat. the main purpose of this study was to determine and charachtrize isolated fmd virus from iran between 2005 - 2006, and to compare it with vaccine virus strains. after preparation of samples, serological test for typing of virus was performed. in order to virus is...

We report here the first blood donation positive for West Nile virus (WNV) by nucleic acid amplification testing collected in north-eastern Italy in July 2012.Partial sequencing of the WNV RNA demonstrated identity with a WNV lineage 1a genome identified in the same area in 2011 and divergence from the strain responsible for the outbreak in northern Italy in 2008–09. These data indicate that WN...

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is a well established technology for acquisition of vast amount of nucleic acid sequence data at very low cost and high throughput. We aim to provide solid framework for the accurate determination of the viral haplotypes of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) using the Illumina MiSeq platform. To do that, we studied the error rates of sequences generated with the longest av...

A 54-year-old female with a prosthetic mitral valve presented with a 3-day history of dizziness, subjective fever, and chills. Blood cultures were positive for a pleomorphic Gram-positive rod. Initial phenotypic testing could only support the identification of a Corynebacterium species. Nucleic acid sequencing (16S rRNA) and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectr...

Viruses are the most common causes of aseptic meningitis. Early detection, treatment and management of viral meningitis are priority. This study aimed to evaluate common viral meningitis in children referred to Taleghani pediatrics hospital in Gorgan, south east of Caspian Sea, Iran. In this descriptive study CSF and blood samples were taken from 40 children with negative bacterial culture who ...

Here we describe a method for constructing small RNA libraries for high-throughput sequencing in which we have made a significant improvement to commonly available standard protocols. We added a locked nucleic acid (LNA) oligonucleotide--named dimer eliminator--that is complementary to the adapter-dimer ligation products during the reverse transcription reaction. It reduces adapter-dimers, whic...