Real-time PCR is the method of choice in many laboratories for diagnostic and food applications. This technology merges the polymerase chain reaction chemistry with the use of fluorescent reporter molecules in order to monitor the production of amplification products during each cycle of the PCR reaction. Thus, the combination of excellent sensitivity and specificity, reproducible data, low con...

Efforts to reduce health care-associated infections (HAIs) have grown in both scale and sophistication over the past few decades; however, the increasing threat of antimicrobial resistance and the impact of new legislation regarding HAIs on health care economics make the fight against them all the more urgent. On-demand polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology has proven to be a highly effect...

A Y chromosomal polymorphic markers screening strategy using a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA microchip electrophoresis technology has recently been developed. It is a part of the human Y chromosome haplotyping system for studying Japanese population genetics and its relationship with male spermatogenic failure. This strategy is based on optimizing and modifying the primer se...

The recent flood of reports using real-time Q-PCR testifies to the transformation of this technology from an experimental tool into the scientific mainstream. Many of the applications of real-time Q-PCR include measuring mRNA expression levels, DNA copy number, transgene copy number and expression analysis, allelic discrimination, and measuring viral titers. The range of applications of real-ti...

The ideal technology for screening single-nucleotide polymorphisms requires high throughput with minimal cost per sample, minimal usage of valuable DNA resources, and maximal flexibility for assessment of new polymorphisms. We demonstrate here the feasibility of kinetic allele-specific PCR with DNA pooling (S. Germer et al., Genome Res., 10: 258-266, 2000) in a population study that satisfies a...