The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been an essential tool for diagnosis of infectious diseases, but conventional PCR still has some limitations with respect to applications to point-of-care (POC) diagnostic systems that require rapid detection and miniaturization. Here we report a light-based PCR method, termed as photo-PCR, which enables rapid detection of bacteria in a single step. In th...

Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus polymerase chain reaction (ERIC-PCR) genomic fingerprinting assays were compared for their ability to differentiate Escherichia coli isolates obtained from various host sources, and with respect to their pathogenicity. One hundred and ten verotoxigenic, enterotoxigenic and non-pathogenic E. coli is...

We hypothesized that the ACE ID / ACTN3 R577X genotype combination was associated with sprint and endurance performance. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to determine the interaction between both ACE ID and ACTN3 R577X polymorphisms and sprint and endurance performance in swimmers. Genomic DNA was extracted from oral epithelial cells using GenElute Mammalian Genomic DNA Miniprep ...

Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has become a well-established and powerful molecular technique for studying ribonucleic acids. It is used in medical diagnostics for detecting viral RNA, in hematology and oncology for detecting chimeric transcripts of rearranged genes (1), and in the broad area of research applications in gene expression studies. Since its introduction (...

was awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry along with Michael Smith for his work on PCR2. The PCR is commonly carried out in a reaction volume of 10-200 μl in small reaction tubes (0.2-0.5 ml volumes) in a thermal cycler. The thermal cycler heats and cools the reaction tubes to achieve the temperatures required at each step of the reaction. Many modern thermal cyclers make use of the Peltier effe...

In this short note, we present the results of a case study for monitoring the whole polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process (all steps) with a glass fiber fluorometer that was described in a former publication. To utilize this fluorometer, which was originally constructed for a PCR machine with three thermostating devices, a new thermostating device has been developed: the glass fiber matrix is...

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an in vitro technique to synthesize large quantities of a given DNA molecule that separates the DNA into two complementary strands, uses a peltier heat pump to quickly heat and cool the DNA and uses the Taq polymerase for the synthesis of DNA. Taq is a bacterium that lives by volcanic sulfer jets at the bottom of the ocean where the temperature is very high. F...