The purpose of this study was to genotype strains of Candida albicans to determine whether specific types were associated with chronic hyperplastic candidosis (CHC). A total of 67 candidal isolates from CHC patients (n = 17) and from patients with other oral conditions (n = 21) were genotyped by PCR fingerprinting employing two interrepeat primer combinations (1245 and 1246 primers or 1251 prim...

Strain comparison is important to population genetics and to evaluate relapses in patients with Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) lung disease, but the "gold standard" of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is time-consuming and complex. We used variable-number tandem repeats (VNTR) for fingerprinting of respiratory isolates of M. intracellulare from patients with underlying bronchiectasis,...

The objective of this study was to investigate the potential of repetitive extragenic palindromic anchored polymerase chain reaction (rep-PCR) in differentiating fecal Escherichia coli isolates of human, domestic- and wild-animal origin that might be used as a molecular tool to identify the possible source(s) of fecal pollution of source water. A total of 625 fecal E. coli isolates of human, 3 ...

Modified thermal cycling conditions were explored in an effort to improve the reproducibility and resolving power of repetitive-element PCR (rep-PCR) fingerprinting. Assay performance was rigorously evaluated under standard and modified cycling conditions, using as a test set 12 strains putatively representing 12 serovars of Salmonella enterica. For all three fingerprint types (ERIC2, BOXA1R, a...

Background: The aim of the study was to analyze the performance of PCR-DGGE based assay and its applicability as a tool for the identification of bacteria in the middle ear of children with otitis media with effusion (OME). Methods: The middle ear effusions from 20 children with OME were analyzed both by bacterial culture and by 16S rDNA-gene-targeted PCR assay, DGGE fingerprinting and sequenci...

Fuelled by the drive to complete the Human Genome Project, many laboratories have developed new methods of screening clone libraries. From PCR-based strategies to pooling schemes and increased automation, the tedious task of library screening has become less labour-intensive and more cost-efficient. Currently, two main screening methods dominate: hybridization and polymerase chain reaction (PCR...

Malassezia furfur and Malassezia pachydermatis were isolated from newborn children and incubators in a neonatal intensive care unit. To assess whether persistence or frequent import of the organisms was the cause of the elevated incidence, genetic typing of the strains was performed by PCR-mediated DNA fingerprinting. By using PCR primers aimed at repeat consensus motifs, six different genotype...

A repetitive sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) technique was developed to characterize the genotypic relatedness among Candida rugosa isolates. Two repetitive sequences, viz., Care-2 and Com29 from Candida albicans, were used to design primers Ca-21, Ca-22, and Com-21, respectively. When used alone or in combination, these primers generated discriminatory fingerprints by amplifying the adjacent vari...

T he polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a rapid procedure for in vitro enzymatic amplification of a specific segment of DNA. Like molecular cloning, PCR has spawned a multitude of experiments that were previously impossible. The number of applications of PCR seems infinite—and is still growing. They include direct cloning from genomic DNA or cDNA, in vitro mutagenesis and engineering of DNA, ge...