In the last decade, genome-wide gene expression data has been collected from a large number of cancer specimens. In many studies utilizing either microarray-based or knowledge-based gene expression profiling, both the validation of candidate genes and the identification and inclusion of biomarkers in prognosis-modeling has employed real-time quantitative PCR on reverse transcribed mRNA (qRT-PCR...

Treating mRNA transcript abundances as quantitative traits and mapping gene expression quantitative trait loci for these traits has been studied in many species from yeast to humans. There has been significant success in finding associations between gene expression and genetic markers. These eQTL studies have been used to identify candidate causal regulators, to construct gene regulation networ...

Amplification of the MYCN gene in neuroblastomas is a potent biological marker of highly aggressive tumors, which are invariably fatal unless sound clinical management is applied. To determine the usefulness of semi-quantitative differential PCR (SQ-PCR) for accurate quantification of MYCN gene copy number, we evaluated the analytical performance of this method by comparing the results obtained...

The unavoidable imprecision of measurements of continuous physical quantities can be modelled by using the concept of fuzzy numbers and fuzzy vectors. Concerning a quantitative usage of such data the classical concept of relative frequencies for real data has to be extended to so-called fuzzy relative frequencies for fuzzy data, whereby the fuzzy relative frequency of a set is a fuzzy number. A...

Background: Mammalian cell division is regulated by a complex includes cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdks) and cyclins, Cdk/cyclin complex. The activity of the complex is regulated by Cdk inhibitors (CKIs) compressing CDK4 (INK4) and CDK-interacting protein/kinase inhibitory protein (CIP/KIP) family. Hypermethylation of CKIs has been reported in various cancers. DNA methyltransferase inhibitors (DN...

Most frequently applied ultrasonic inspection techniques measure the reflectivity of geometric scatterers that are caused by impurities, flaws and defects in the material. Based on the echo sounder principles, the reflector has to be insonified by directed sound pulses. This requires a large number of transducers with different incident angles and sound field patterns, which are more and more r...

The sensitivity of analysis achievable with PCR has led to the technology being adopted across a range of sectors. For many applications a quantitative result is required, which has driven the development of a range of strategies to determine the amount of starting material in a sample. Approaches such as competitive PCR and limiting dilution analysis have been used as routes to quantification,...