In the EU, the use as ingredients in food of several major allergens or products derived thereof is to be labelled according to EU Directives 2003/89/EC and 2006/142/EC. This obligation only concerns the use of allergenic ingredients according to recipe. However, allergens may also be present in food due to cross contamination in food production facilities or contamination of raw materials or i...

The goal of this project is to develop novel STR multiplexes with reduced amplicon sizes for the analysis and detection of degraded and contaminated DNA. In such samples, DNA template can become highly fragmented due to bacterial, biochemical, or oxidative processes, and the possibility of finding an intact target sequence for PCR is greatly reduced. In this project researchers are developing a...

EDITOR—In a recent issue of this journal, Goodship et al reported monozygotic twins with a deletion in chromosome region 22q11 and a discordant phenotype. They concluded that phenotypic variability in this syndrome cannot be explained on the basis of genotypic diVerences alone. Here we report another case of monozygotic twins with an identical deletion in 22q11 but with discordant manifestation...

EDITOR—In a recent issue of this journal, Goodship et al reported monozygotic twins with a deletion in chromosome region 22q11 and a discordant phenotype. They concluded that phenotypic variability in this syndrome cannot be explained on the basis of genotypic diVerences alone. Here we report another case of monozygotic twins with an identical deletion in 22q11 but with discordant manifestation...

Short tandem repeat (STR) typing at the single-cell level is a promising tool for human forensic identification when the biological evidence materials are comprised of mixtures of cells from multiple individuals at relatively low concentrations. Here we describe a novel single-cell STR typing method with high sensitivity, fidelity and throughput that combines microfluidic droplet generation wit...

Like Thomas Hardy's famous novel Far from the Madding Crowd, Plasmodium falciparum parasites display their most relevant survival structures (proteins) involved in host cell invasion far away from the immune system's susceptible regions, displaying tremendous genetic variability, to attract the immune response and escape immune pressure. The 3D structure localisation of the conserved amino acid...

Embryonic chromosomal abnormalities are the major cause of miscarriage. An accurate, rapid, and cheap method chromosome analysis in miscarriage is warranted clinical practice. Thus, a high-throughput ligation-dependent probe amplification (HLPA)-based detecting aneuploidies copy number variations was developed. A total 1060 cases were assessed. Each specimen subjected to quantitative fluorescen...

Biochemical, structural and single amino acid level analysis of 49 Plasmodium falciparum protein regions (13 sporozoite and 36 merozoite proteins) has highlighted the functional role of each conserved high activity binding peptide (cHABP) in cell host-microbe interaction, involving biological functions such as gliding motility, traversal activity, binding invasion, reproduction, nutrient ion tr...