The intestinal microbiota compositions of 92 Japanese men were identified following consumption of identical meals for 3 days, and collected feces were analyzed through terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. The obtained operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and subjects' smoking and drinking habits, which had 2 nominal partitions, yes or no, were analyzed by Data mining software. Iden...

poproteins in mouse peritoneal macrophages. J Mol Med 2000;78:217–27. 3. Wenham PR, Sedky A, Spooner RJ. Apolipoprotein E phenotyping: a word of caution. Ann Clin Biochem 1991;28:599–605. 4. Hixson JE, Vernier DT. Restriction isotyping of human apolipoprotein E by gene amplification and cleavage with HhaI. J Lipid Res 1990;31:545–8. 5. Somsen GW, Welten HT, Mulder FP, Swart CW, Kema IP, de Jong...

Toxoplasmosis caused by Toxoplasma gondii is one of the most prevalent parasitic diseases in human beings. Human toxoplasmosis can be associated with serious clinical manifestations, particularly in developing fetus. The aim of the current study was to identify the possible lineage type of Toxoplasma gondii, molecularly detected in placental samples of women whose pregnancies were spontaneously...

Association of alteration in DNA methylation pattern in triggering 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA)-induced transcription of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) gene in T24 cells was determined. In accord with our previous findings (Archiv. Biochem. Biophys., 262: 326-336, 1988), TPA treatment of T24 cells, cultured in serum-free medium, resulted in a dramatic (approximately 15-fold) increa...

To evaluate PCR-generated artifacts (i.e., chimeras, mutations, and heteroduplexes) with the 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA)-based cloning approach, a model community of four species was constructed from alpha, beta, and gamma subdivisions of the division Proteobacteria as well as gram-positive bacterium, all of which could be distinguished by HhaI restriction digestion patterns. The overall PCR artif...

A DNA fragment carrying the thrP region of Escherichia coli has been identified and characterized. Starting from a secondary site lysogen of bacteriophage h, where the position of the prophage is either within thrP or between thrP and thr structural genes (Gardner et al., 1974; Gardner & Smith, 1975) it has been possible to isolate transducing phages which carry bacterial DNA from either side o...

BACKGROUND The microflora hypothesis may be the underlying explanation for the growth of inflammatory disease. In addition to many known affecting factors, knowing the gut microbiota of healthy newborns can help to understand the gut immunity and modulate it. OBJECTIVES This study examined the microbiota of healthy newborns from urban regions. PATIENTS AND METHODS We enrolled 128 full-term ...

Approximately one third of breast cancers grow independently of estrogen, lack detectable estrogen receptor (ER) protein, and rarely respond to hormonal treatment. Previous studies correlated the lack of ER gene expression in ER-negative breast tumor cells with hypermethylation of a CpG island in the 5' region of the ER gene. In order to determine whether demethylation of the ER gene in the ER-...

Aberrant DNA methylation is a potential diagnostic marker for complex diseases, such as cancer. With the increase in the number of genes known to exhibit disease-associated aberrant methylation, the need for accurate multiplex assays for quantifying DNA methylation has increased. Methylation-specific multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MS-MLPA) is one method that has been highligh...

Most prokaryotic (cytosine-5)-DNA methyltransferases increase the frequency of deamination at the cytosine targeted for methylation in vitro in the absence of the cofactor S-adenosylmethionine (AdoMet) or the reaction product S-adenosylhomocysteine (AdoHcy). We show here that, under the same in vitro conditions, the prokaryotic methyltransferase, M.MspI (from Moraxella sp.), causes very few cyt...