Dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonia (DNRA) is the process in which nitrate is reduced, via nitrite, to ammonia. Bacteria known to carry out DNRA mainly originate from wastewater treatment plants, where DNRA is a relevant process. The ability to carry out DNRA is phylogenetically widespread, and the gene nrfA, encoding for the key enzyme of the second step of the pathway, could be used as...

We have designed a single polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primer pair that detects the MLL/AF-4 fusion mRNA encoded by the derivative 11 chromosome from t(4;11)(q21;q23) leukemia cells using the reverse transcriptase PCR technique. PCR amplification was possible in seven of seven cells studied. Sequencing of the amplified products showed three different breakpoints on 11q23 and three on 4q21, r...

We report an approach for generating immobilized monoclonal templates for next- generation sequencing applications. Our isothermal amplification method is based on a template walking mechanism using a pair of low-melting temperature (Tm) solid-surface homopolymer primers and a low-Tm solution phase primer. The method can generate more than one billion submicrometer-sized colonies in a single la...

The ability to select short DNA oligonucleotide sequences capable of binding solely to their intended target is of great importance in developing nucleic acid based detection technologies. Applications such as multiplex PCR rely on primers binding to unique regions in a genome. Competing side reactions with other primer pairs or template DNA decrease PCR efficiency: Freely available primer desi...

We use the quantum corrected chargino production cross section, including information on the beam polarization and chargino helicities, to estimate the precision achievable at a 1 TeV, 500 fb Linear Collider on the determination of fundamental supersymmetric parameters from measurements of light chargino mass and production cross sections. We show that to get meaningful results higher order cor...

For k > 1, r 6= 0 and large x, let π 2r (x) denote the number of prime pairs (p, p+2r) with p ≤ x. By the Bateman–Horn conjecture the function π 2r(x) should be asymptotic to (2/k)C k 2rli2(x), with certain specific constants C 2r . Heuristic arguments lead to the conjecture that these constants have mean value one, just like the Hardy–Littlewood constants C2r for prime pairs (p, p + 2r). The c...