Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium perfringens are two major bacteria that infect open wounds and delay the healing process. The rapid and progressive deterioration of soft tissue during S. aureus and C. perfringens coinfections is due to analogous necrotic alpha toxins produced by the two organisms. The aim of this study was to determine the alpha toxins of S. aureus and C. perfringens by d...

AIMS Alcohol dehydrogenase beta subunit (ADH2) Arg47His and aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) Glu487Lys were genotyped by a duplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with confronting two-pair primers (PCR-CTPP), which allows DNA amplification with one-tube PCR including eight primers, and subsequent electrophoresis. METHODS Several PCR conditions were tested to establish the optimal conditions fo...

BACKGROUND Candida albicans is the most pathogenic Candida species but shares many phenotypic features with Candida dubliniensis and may, therefore, be misidentified in clinical microbiology laboratories. Candidemia cases due to C. dubliniensis are increasingly being reported in recent years. Accurate identification is warranted since mortality rates are highest for C. albicans infections, howe...

Real-time PCR assays based on the LightCycler technology were developed for individual (simplex PCR) and simultaneous (duplex PCR) detection and discrimination of Bordetella pertussis and Bordetella parapertussis in clinical samples. The assays were evaluated with 113 specimens from patients with and without symptoms of pertussis. Results were compared to those from conventional culture and Taq...

We describe a duplex real-time PCR assay using TaqMan probes for the simultaneous detection of monodon baculovirus (MBV) and hepatopancreatic parvovirus (HPV). Both MBV and HPV are shrimp enteric viruses that infect intestinal and hepatopancreatic epithelial cells. Both viruses can cause significant mortalities and depressed growth in infected larval, postlarval, and early juvenile stages of sh...

Infectious bronchitis (IB) and Newcastle disease (ND) are highly contagious and the most economically important diseases of the poultry affecting respiratory tract and causing economic losses in poultry industry throughout the world. In the present study, the simultaneous detection and differentiation of causative agents of these diseases were investigated using duplex-RT-PCR. RNA was extracted...

Korean native honey (KNH) is much more expensive than European honey (EH) in Korea, because KNH is a favored honey which is produced less than EH. Food fraud of KNH has drawn attention of the government office concerned, which is in need of a method to differentiate between KNH and EH which are produced by the Asiatic honeybee, Apis cerana and the European honeybee, Apis mellifera, respectively...

We have developed a duplex real-time PCR for the rapid diagnosis of Streptococcus pneumoniae infection from culture-negative clinical samples with the simultaneous determination of penicillin susceptibility. The assay amplifies a lytA gene target and a penicillin binding protein 2b (pbp2b) gene target in penicillin-susceptible organisms. The assay was shown to be sensitive (detects 0.5 CFU per ...

Melissococcus plutonius is the causative agent of an important honeybee disease, European foulbrood (EFB). In addition to M. plutonius strains with typical characteristics (typical M. plutonius), we recently reported the presence of atypical M. plutonius, which are phenotypically and genetically distinguished from typical M. plutonius. Because typical and atypical M. plutonius may have differen...