Aptamers are highly structured oligonucleotides (DNA or RNA) that can bind to targets with affinities comparable to antibodies (1). They are identified through an in vitro selection process called Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment (SELEX) to recognize a wide variety of targets, from small molecules to proteins and other macromolecules (2-4). Aptamers have properties that...

The success of PCR is partly based on its exponential amplification characteristics. Nevertheless, in practice, the achievable yields are limited. Figure 1A and B shows the quantification of a typical reaction with varying but defined amounts of starting template. Every five cycles an aliquot of the reaction was removed and afterwards the amount of accumulated product quantitated. Although, ini...

Title of Document: CHARACTERIZATION OF NOVEL NUCLEIC ACID INHIBITORS (APTAMERS) OF HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS REVERSE TRANSCRIPTASE SELECTED USING A PRIMER-FREE SELEX APPROACH Yi-Tak Lai, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Directed By: Dr. Jeffrey J. DeStefano, Professor Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics Aptamers are synthetic, single stranded nucleic acids that bind specifically to t...

Oligonucleotide aptamers are highly structured DNA or RNA molecules, or modified versions thereof, that can bind to targets with specific affinities comparable to antibodies. They are identified through an in vitro selection process termed SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment) to recognize a wide variety of targets, from small molecules to proteins, and from cultured...

We produced 102 randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers mapped on all 12 chromosomes of rice using DNAs of cultivars Nipponbare (japonica) and Kasalath (indica) and of F2 population generated by a single cross of these parents. Sixty random primers 10 nucleotides long were used both singly and in random pairs and about 1,400 primer-pairs were tested. Using both agarose gel and polyacr...

The present study was conducted to evaluate the genetic diversity and relationships of 5 Egyptian indigenous strains (Fayoumi, Dokki-4, Golden Montazah, Silver Montazah, and El-Salam) using 10 random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) primers. The gel analyses were performed using GelCompare II where the matrix was constructed followed by the cluster analysis for the matrices. Three hundre...

Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) bands that distinguish Meloidogyne hapla and M. chitwoodi from each other, and from other root-knot nematode species, were identified using a series of random octamer primers. The species-specific amplified DNA fragments were cloned and sequenced, and then the sequences were used to design 20-mer primer pairs that specifically amplified a DNA fragment fro...

INTRODUCTIONPCR-based whole-genome amplification (WGA) has the goal of generating microgram quantities of genome-representative DNA from picogram or nanogram amounts of starting material. This amplification should introduce little, or ideally no, representational bias. Unlike other techniques for WGA, PCR-based methods are generally less affected by DNA quality and are more applicable to DNA ex...