Mycoplasma contamination of cell lines is one of the major problems in cell culture technology. The specific, sensitive, and reliable detection of mycoplasma contamination is an important part of mycoplasma control and should be an established method in every cell culture laboratory. New cell lines as well as cell lines in continuous culture must be tested in regular intervals. The polymerase c...

To survive in host cells, intracellular pathogens or symbiotic bacteria require protective mechanisms to overcome the oxidative stress generated by phagocytic activities of the host. By genomic library tagging, we cloned a dps (stands for DNA-binding protein from starved cells) gene of the symbiotic "Candidatus Legionella jeonii" organism (called the X bacterium) (dps(X)) that grows in Amoeba p...

To the Editor: Since the first demonstration of the presence of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma of pregnant women (1 ), many reports have been published, mainly about fetal sex and RhD determinations (2, 3). Although good results have been obtained with conventional PCR, real-time PCR is now the most widely used amplification system for fetal DNA analysis because it allows high sensitivi...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most well-known primary liver malignancy worldwide. Its incidence is rising at alarming rates and has become a public concern globally. It is more frequent in developing countries than in industrialized countries with respect to geographical variation, ethnic disparities and socioeconomic status. Dietary exposure to aflatoxins is among the major HCC risk fa...

Establishment of cell lines in vitro from a human lung cancer xenograft in nude mice resulted in transformed mouse cell lines. The transformed mouse cell lines expressed both mouse-specific and human-specific histocompatibility antigens. Of 3 cell lines, 2 were tumorigenic in BALB/c nude mice but not in normal mice. Tumors formed by the transformed mouse cell lines were fibroblastoid and epithe...

in recent years transdifferentiation technology has enabled direct conversion of human fibroblasts to become a valuable, abundant and accessible cell source for patient-specific induced cell generation in biomedical research. the majority of transdifferentiation approaches rely upon viral gene delivery which due to random integration with the host genome can cause genome instability and tumorig...

The invasion plasmid antigens (Ipa) of Shigella spp, are effector molecules necessary for the invasion of colonic epithelial cells. Recently, we have isolated an invasin protein-LPS complex from intact, virulent Shigella (Invaplex). In vitro observations suggest that Invaplex interacts with host-cell membranes, is internalized, and is released into the cytoplasm via a process similar to the act...