OBJECTIVE There is an established association between the development of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and the HLA-B27 allele, but whether or not homozygosity for HLA B27 has any additional effects on the clinical manifestations of AS is unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of HLA-B27 homozygosity on the clinical manifestations of AS in Korea. METHODS A total of 490 pat...

  Background and Objective: The outcome of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection may be influenced by host factors like Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA). We have investigated HLA-A and DRB1 alleles in patients with persistent hepatitis B infection compared to subjects who had spontaneously recovered from HBV infection. To complete the findings of this study we performed another survey in certain HLA ...

This chapter introduces the software package PRIMEGENS for designing gene-specific probes and associated PCR primers on a large scale. Such design is especially useful for constructing cDNA or oligo microarray to minimize cross-hybridization. PRIMEGENS can also be used for designing primers to amplify a segment of a unique target gene using reverse-transcriptase (RT)-PCR. The input to PRIMEGENS...

Simple sequence repeat (SSR) molecular genetic markers have become important tools for a broad range of applications such as genome mapping and genetic diversity studies. SSRs are readily identified within DNA sequence data and PCR primers can be designed for their amplification. These PCR primers frequently cross amplify within related species. We report a web-based tool, SSR Primer, that inte...

Background: Entecavir (ETV) is commonly used to treat chronic hepatitis B (CHB) in China. However, certain percentages of e-Antigen (HBeAg) positive CHB patients do not respond to ETV therapy. Objective: To investigate whether the killer immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) genes were associated with seroconversion in HBeAg positive CHB responder patients treated with ETV. Methods: Polymerase cha...

In this study, the full-length M2 gene of the avian influenza virus (H9N2) was isolated, analyzed and studied in detail. Total RNA was extracted and cDNA of the M2 mRNA was obtained by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using random hexamer oligoes; specific primers were used for amplification of the M2 open reading frame (ORF) region. PCR was able to amplify the desirable...

Reproducible and target-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification relies on several interrelated factors of which primer design is central. Here, we describe new free bioinformatics software, the FastPCR which was developed, and continues to be updated, based on detailed experimental studies of PCR efficiency for the optimal design of primers and probe sequences and for repeat sear...