Due to the potential for intentional contamination of food with crude preparations containing ricin, a real-time PCR method was developed for the detection of castor plant material in ground beef. One primer pair was identified and confirmed to be castor-specific and efficient for amplification of ricin in DNA extracts from castor or beef matrices. Of three different DNA extraction protocols co...

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assays can target either DNA (the genome) or RNA (the transcriptome). Targeting the genome generates robust data that are informative and, most importantly, generally applicable. This is because the information contained within the genome is context-independent; i.e., generally, every normal cell contains the same DNA sequence--the same mutations and polymo...

dear editor-in-chief we read with interest the study by khazaei et al. (1) in which the authors have nicely concluded that pcr is more sensitive test than ziehl-neelsen staining and histo-pathological examination for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (tb). they have rightly pointed to use pcr, selectively, in acidfast bacilli negative paucibacillary forms of tb. however, we intend to highlight few ...

INTRODUCTION Minimal residual disease is an important independent prognostic factor that can identify poor responders among patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to analyze minimal residual disease using immunoglobulin (Ig) and T-cell receptor (TCR) gene rearrangements by conventional polymerase chain reaction followed by homo-heteroduplex analysis an...