1. High assay specificity without use of a probe. Despite the fact that probes may increase the detection specificity of an assay, undetected coamplification of nonspecific products (off-target amplification and primerdimers) may negatively impact the performance of the assay, even for probe-based assays. PrimePCR assays are based on state-of-the-art specificity prediction algorithms, followed ...

An assay for telomerase activity based on asymmetric polymerase chain reaction (A-PCR) on magnetic beads (MBs) and subsequent application of cycling probe technology (CPT) is described. In this assay, the telomerase reaction products are immobilized on MBs, which are then washed to remove PCR inhibitors that are commonly found in clinical samples. The guanine-rich sequences (5'-(TTAGGG)n-3') of...

Multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is an emerging problem of great importance to public health, with higher mortality rates than drug-sensitive TB, particularly in immunocompromised patients. MDR-TB patients require treatment with more-toxic second-line drugs and remain infectious for longer than patients infected with drug-sensitive strains, incurring higher costs due to p...

We report on a strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with a deletion in the protein antigen B gene overlapping the probe binding sites for the Abbott Diagnostics LCx M. tuberculosis (LCx-MTB) probe assay. A false-negative result with the LCx-MTB assay delayed a laboratory diagnosis of tuberculosis.

Proof of drug-target engagement in physiologically-relevant contexts is a key pillar of successful therapeutic target validation. We developed two orthogonal technologies, the cellular thermal shift assay (CETSA) and a covalent chemical probe reporter approach (harnessing sulfonyl fluoride tyrosine labeling and subsequent click chemistry) to measure the occupancy of the mRNA-decapping scavenger...

The apolipoprotein E (APOE) epsilon4 allele is a known risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease, however, an association of the APOE genotype with schizophrenia is controversial. We investigated the association in 60 Korean schizophrenic patients and 60 healthy controls. APOE genotypes were identified by reverse hybridization-based line probe assay. There were significant differen...

Background and Objectives: The DNA probe assay is an alternative to culture for the detection of Neisseria gonorrhoeae which does not depend on the viability of the organism. There have been few published studies comparing the two methodologies. The majority of these studies have shown the probe assay to be comparable to culture. The goal of this study was to compare the performance of the DNA ...

Ligation-based nucleic acid detection methods are primarily limited to DNA, since they exhibit poor performance on RNA. This is attributed to reduced end-joining efficiency and/or fidelity of ligases. Interestingly, chlorella virus DNA ligase (PBCV-1 DNA ligase) has recently been shown to possess high RNA-templated DNA end-joining activity; however, its fidelity has not yet been systematically ...

Rapid line probe assay (LPA) can be a practical and rapid alternative to the slow conventional phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) for detection of drug resistant tuberculosis (TB). The purpose of this study is to determine the diagnostic accuracy of Genotype MTBDRplus, LPA for TB, and compare its performance with conventional DST. A total of 54 culture samples were analyzed for DST us...