Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a leading disease in pig industry worldwide and can result in serious economic losses each year. The PRRS epidemic situation in China has been very complicated since the unprecedented large-scale highly pathogenic PRRS (HP-PRRS) outbreaks in 2006. And now the HP-PRRS virus (HP-PRRSV) and classical North American type PRRSV strains have coe...

Hereditary hemochromatosis (HH), an iron overload disease, is the most common known inheritable disease. The most prevalent form of HH is believed to be the result of a single base-pair mutation. We describe a rapid homogeneous mutation analysis method that does not require post-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) manipulations. This method is a marriage of three emerging technologies: rapid cyclin...

Mycoplasmas are the smallest and simplest organisms known. They form a large group of bacteria that can infect humans, animals, and plants. Even though several techniques have been proposed to enumerate mycoplasmas in broth medium, the determination of mycoplasma growth still remains a difficult task. The potential of using flow cytometry (FC) for rapidly estimating several species of mycoplasm...

Several real-time PCR procedures for the detection and genotyping of oocysts of Cryptosporidium parvum were evaluated. A 40-cycle amplification of a 157-bp fragment from the C. parvum beta-tubulin gene detected individual oocysts which were introduced into the reaction mixture by micromanipulation. SYBR Green I melting curve analysis was used to confirm the specificity of the method when DNA ex...

In this study, different assays were used to assess the structural and functional integrity of the sperm plasma membrane following freezing-thawing of the whole ejaculates (WEs) and sperm-rich fractions (SRFs) of boar semen. Besides sperm viability assessments (motility and mitochondrial membrane potential using a mitochondrial specific dye, JC-1 with propidium iodide, PI), sperm plasma membran...

Recent advances have facilitated the real-time monitoring of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) by the inclusion of fluorescent labels, such as SYBR Green I (FMC BioProducts, Rockland, ME, USA), and have triggered the widespread use of quantitative PCR of cDNA targets (5–7). Nevertheless, because SYBR Green I binds nonspecifically to double-stranded (ds)DNA, it is essential to assess the specific...

The HLA B*58:01 allele has been worldwide reported as a pharmacogenetic susceptibility to allopurinol-induced severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs). To prevent these life-threatening conditions, the American College of Rheumatology hingly recommended that the HLA-B*58:01 be screened prior to the initiation of allopurinol therapy. Therefore, we developed a rapid, robust, inexpensive screeni...

The article describes the immobilization of different probe oligonucleotides (4, 7, 10) carrying each a racemic mixture of 2,3-bis(hexadecyloxy)propan-1-ol (1a) at the 5'-terminus on a stable artificial lipid bilayer composed of 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine (POPE) and 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC). The bilayer separates two compartments (cis/tr...

Tetraalkylammonium (TAA) derivatives have been reported to serve as stabilizers of asymmetrical cyanine dyes in aqueous solutions and to increase the yield and efficiency of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detected by end-point analysis. In this study, we compared the ability of various TAA derivatives (with alkyl chain ranging from 1 to 5 carbons) and some other compounds to serve as enhancers...