Several known trans-splicing RNA structures were used to define a canonical trans-splicing structure which was then used to perform a computer search of the EMBL nucleotide database. In addition to most known trans-splicing structures, many putative new trans-splicing sites were detected. These were found in a broad range of organisms including the vertebrates. Control experiments indicate that...

BACKGROUND A recent attempt to estimate the false-positive rate for cancer epidemiology studies is based on agents in International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) category 3 (agent not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans) in the IARC Monographs Program. METHODS The estimation method is critiqued regarding biases caused by its reliance on the IARC classification criteria for...

Motivation: Small Ubiquitin-related modifier (SUMO) proteins are widely expressed in eukaryotic cells, which are reversibly coupled to their substrates by motif recognition, called sumoylation. Two interesting questions are 1) how many potential SUMO substrates may be included in mammalian proteomes, such as human and mouse, 2) and given a SUMO substrate, can we recognize its sumoylation sites?...

MOTIVATION While the use of cDNA microarrays for functional genomic analysis has become commonplace, relatively little attention has been placed on false positives, i.e. the likelihood that a change in measured radioactive or fluorescence intensity may reflect a change in gene expression when, in fact, there is none. Since cDNA arrays are being increasingly used to rapidly distinguish biomarker...

The sensitivity and specificity of seven microscopy-based Cryptosporidium oocyst detection methods were compared after application to unconcentrated fecal smears. The seven methods were as follows: (i) a commercial acid-fast (AF) stain (VOLU-SOL) method, (ii) Truant auramine-rhodamine (AR) stain method, (iii) fluorescein-conjugated C1B3 monoclonal antibody (MAb) direct fluorescence method, (iv)...

Strategies for adaptive and nonadaptive group testing are developed when the items are linearly ordered and the positive items form a consecutive subset of all items.