Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are usually classified into Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). NOD2/CARD15 was the first identified CD-susceptibility gene and was confirmed as the most potent disease gene in CD pathogenesis. Three NOD2/CARD15 variants, namely two missense polymorphisms R702W (rs2066844) and G908R (rs2066845), and a frame shift polymorphism L1007fs (rs2066847), ...

Transition of the double-stranded DNA molecule to its two single strands, DNA denaturation or melting, has been used for many years to study DNA structure and composition. Recent technological advances have improved the potential of this technology, especially to detect variants in the DNA sequence. Sensitivity and specificity were increased significantly by the development of so-called saturat...

High-resolution melting analysis (HRMA) is a highly sensitive closed-tube genotyping method used primarily in clinical studies. As the method is rapid, inexpensive and amenable to high throughput, we decided to investigate its applicability to population studies. Small amplicons and unlabelled probes were used to genotype the nuclear genes, lactate dehydrogenase-A (ldh-A), myosin light chain-2 ...

Although CRISPR technology allows specific genome alterations to be created with relative ease, detection of these events can be problematic. For example, CRISPR-induced double-strand breaks are often repaired imprecisely to generate unpredictable short indel mutations. Detection of these events requires the use of molecular screening techniques such as endonuclease assays, restriction profilin...

The increased public concern about adulteration and mislabelling of meat products has fueled a need for the development fast, reliable, cost-effective species detection methods. Hence, we developed high resolution melt analysis (HRMA) discrimination commonly used in industry their possible adulterants. A universal primer pair spanning ⁓238 bp fragment mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene was designed to...

Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) can be a severe complication occurring in patients with cirrhosis and ascites, with associated mortality often as high as 40%. Traditional diagnostics for SBP rely on culture techniques for proper diagnosis, although recent reports suggest that the presence of bacterial DNA in peritoneal fluid in patients with cirrhosis and ascites is an indicator of SBP....

High-resolution melt analysis (HRMA) is a cheap and reliable post-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) cancer mutation screening technique, which is fast gaining clinical relevance. The HRMA capabilities of the LightScanner (Idaho Technology) have been severally studied. However, the ABI 7500 HRM has not been tested against the purpose-built HRM instrument such as the LightScanner. DNA from formalin...

BACKGROUND Molecular genotyping of Bacillus anthracis, the etiologic agent of anthrax, is important for differentiating and identifying strains from different geographic areas and for tracing strains deliberately released in a bioterrorism attack. We previously described a multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat (VNTR) analysis (MLVA) based on 25 marker loci. Although the method has great ...

OBJECTIVES qnr genes are plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance genes. Five qnr families have been described with several alleles (7 alleles of qnrA, 53 alleles of qnrB, 1 allele of qnrC, 1 allele of qnrD and 6 alleles of qnrS). Their detection requires a PCR specific for each qnr family and further sequencing for allele characterization. METHODS High-resolution melt curve analysis (HRMA) was ...

It is very hard to find computable examples of geodesics in the space of Kaehler metrics. It seems that they come in two types: (i) geodesics of toric Kaehler metrics, the topic of Lecture 2; (iii) geodesics coming from special test configurations and Hele-Shaw flows. Besides Donaldson’s construction (reviewed in §1) there are not many examples of geodesic rays. Almost the only other explicit e...