Cell-free DNA has been used for fetal rhesus factor and sex determination, fetal aneuploidy screening, cancer diagnostics and monitoring, and other applications. However current methods of using cell free DNA require amplification, which leads to allelic dropout and bias especially when starting with small amounts of DNA. Here we describe an amplification-free method for sequencing of cell-free...

We consider a family of explicit compact schemes for advection in one dimension. The order is arbitrarily high. These stencils may be called Strang’s stencils after the seminal work of Strang [J. Math. Phys., 41 (1962), pp. 147–154]. We prove that odd order schemes are stable in all Lq under CFL one. The strategy of the proof is similar to the one of Thomée [J. Differential Equations, 1 (1965),...

In this paper we analyze the bi-conjugate gradient algorithm in finite precision arithmetic, and suggest reasons for its often observed robustness. By using a tridiagonal structure, which is preserved by the finite precision bi-conjugate gradient iteration, we are able to bound its residual norm by a minimum polynomial of a perturbed matrix (i.e. the residual norm of the exact GMRES applied to ...

Primary brain tumors of glial origin often overexpress epidermal growth factor receptors (EGF-Rs). This may be associated with amplifi cation of the EGF-R gene. We have examined tissue from 23 glioblastoma multiforme tumors and found amplification and rearrangement of the EGF-R gene in four of these. The cytoplasmic domain of the EGF-R gene was invariably amplified in these four tumors, while t...

The transmembrane tyrosine kinase mesenchymal-epidermal transition (MET) receptor and its ligand, hepatocyte growth factor, also known as scatter factor, have recently been identified as novel promising targets in several human malignancies, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Amplification, mutation, or overexpression of the MET gene can result in aberrant activation of the MET axis,...

Genomic DNA extracted from bovine mummified tissue is valuable material for detection of some genes that may contribute to fetal abnormalities. In this study bovine genomic DNA was extracted from the hardened tissue samples of ten bovine mummified fetuses. The amount of genomic DNA extracted from 2 g of the mummified tissues by the phenol/chloroform-ethanol method was low (less than 4 microg/ml...

It is well known that the amplification of the HER2 gene is closely associated with poor prognosis of breast cancer. However, there is controversy about the clinical significance of HER2 according to lymph node status in breast cancer. The aim of this study was to identify the differences in the prognostic significance of HER2 gene amplification according to the stages of breast cancer. We prep...