background: parasitological methods for the diagnosis of visceral leishmania-sis (vl) require invasive procedures, so serological and molecular approaches have been developed but are not generally applicable in the field. we evaluated a loop mediated isothermal amplification (lamp) assay using blood from vl pa-tients and compared it to nested pcr. methods: forty-seven subjects with clinical fea...

introduction: fish mycobacteriosis is caused by the non-tuberculous mycobacteria. infected fish are normally the primary source of infection, although non-tuberculous mycobacteria can be found in the environment. the present study was designed to  investigate the few recently found suspected cases of mycobacteriosis in iranian ornamental fish tanks.   materials and methods: pathological specime...

The effects of chromosomal position and neighboring genomic elements on gene targeting in human cells remain largely unexplored. To study these, we used a shuttle vector system in which murine leukemia virus (MLV)-based proviral targets present at different chromosomal locations and containing mutations in the neomycin phosphotransferase (neo) gene were corrected by adeno-associated virus (AAV)...

The prospect of utilizing CRISPR-based gene-drive technology for controlling populations has generated much excitement. However, the potential spillovers alleles from target population to non-target raised concerns. Here, using mathematical models, we investigate possibility limiting by designing differential-targeting gene drives, in which expected equilibrium allele frequencies are high but l...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small preserved non-coding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally by targeting the 3' UTR of mRNAs for translational repression or degradation. The rising evidence has established the significant role of miRNAs within the regulation of immune system and the prevention of autoimmunity. MiR-146a has obtained an importance as a modulator of differ...

The analytical performance of 9 different PCR primer sets designed to detect Escherichia coli and Shigella in water has been evaluated in terms of ubiquity, specificity, and analytical detection limit. Of the 9 PCR primer sets tested, only 3 of the 5 primer sets targeting uidA gene and the primer set targeting tuf gene amplified DNA from all E. coli strains tested. However, of those 4 primer se...

Background Congenital toxoplasmosis is an important cause of spontaneous abortion worldwide. However, there is limited information on detection and genotypic characterization of T. gondii in women with recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA). The aim of this study is molecular detection and genotypic characterization of T. gondii in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded fetoplacental tissues (FFPTs) o...

Transcriptional targeting is the best approach for specific gene therapy. Hypoxia is a common feature of the tumour microenvironment. Therefore, targeting gene expression in hypoxic cells by placing transgene under the control of a hypoxia-responsive promoter can be a good strategy for cancer-specific gene therapy. The hypoxia-inducible gene expression system has been investigated more in suici...