Background: Based on the studies, variation in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number in peripheral blood leukocytes is associated with increased susceptibility to diseases including cancer. Opiate abusers are at high risk for diseases. In this study, we measured the mtDNA copy number in peripheral blood leukocytes in a group of opiate abusers compared with those in healthy individuals. Met...

BACKGROUND Baylisascaris procyonis (Nematoda: Ascaridida), an intestinal nematode of raccoons, is emerging as an important helminthic zoonosis due to serious or fatal larval migrans in animals and humans. Despite its significant veterinary and public health impact, the epidemiology, molecular ecology and population genetics of this parasite remain largely unexplored. Mitochondrial (mt) genomes ...

Rieske/cytochrome b (Rieske/cytb) complexes are proton pumping quinol oxidases that are present in most bacteria and Archaea. The phylogeny of their subunits follows closely the 16S-rRNA phylogeny, indicating that chemiosmotic coupling was already present in the last universal common ancestor of Archaea and bacteria. Haloarchaea are the only organisms found so far that acquired Rieske/cytb comp...

A new species of Docosia Winnertz, Docosia dentata sp. n., is described and illustrated, based on a single male specimen collected in Muránska planina National Park in Central Slovakia. DNA sequences (COI, COII, CytB, and ITS2) are included and compared for 13 species of Docosia. There was found only little congruence between the molecular results and previous scarce data about interspecific re...

Methods Relationships of the five species of Hypomesus from throughout the North Pacific were reconstructed through maximum likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of sequence data from two mitochondrial (cytb, 16S) and three nuclear (ITS2, S71, RAG1) gene regions of five to 25 individuals per species, totalling 3588 characters. The resulting phylogenies were used to test hypotheses of sp...

In 2006, xenotropic murine leukemia virus (MLV)-related gammaretrovirus (XMRV) was isolated from prostate cancer tissue (9). However, subsequent studies have yielded conflicting and controversial results, with widespread detection of XMRV suggested to be the result of contamination with mouse DNA (3). While recent work has focused on PCR-based targeted detection of XMRV (10), the advent of next...

Esox lucius is an economically important freshwater species. Mitochondrial cytb, 12SrRNA, and 16SrRNA gene sequences were used in order to clarify the genetic variation and population structure in three E. Lucius populations, i.e., one Wild population (W) and two hatchery populations (Hatchery Population I-HPI and Hatchery Population II-HPII). A total of 55 individuals, with 19 from wild and 1...

ataxia-telangiectasia (at) is a rare human neurodegenerative autosomal recessive multisystem disease characterized by a wide range of features including progressive cerebellar ataxia during infancy, occulocutaneous telangiectasia, susceptibility to neoplasia, occulomotor disturbances, chromosomal instability and growth and developmental abnormalities. mitochondrial dna (mtdna) has the only non-...

In order to evaluate differentiate genetic differences among Schistosoma japonicum isolates from Dali Ancient City, Xizhou and Yongsheng County, Yunnan Province, China, mitochondrial col, cytb, nd1, nd6, and nd4l were PCR amplified and sequenced, revealing nucleotide difference(s) among these strains of 8, 1, 5, 4, and 0, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that S. japonicum from the thr...