Objective(s):To culture thein vitro mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) and to direct their  differentiation to germ-line cells; in present study we used a vector backbone containing the fusion construct Stra8-EGFP to select differentiated ES cells that entered meiosis.  Retinoic acid was used to differentiate embryonic stem cells to germ cells. Materials and Methods: A fragment of Stra8 gene pr...

Background and Aims: NDV (Newcastle Disease Virus) is one of the viruses that cause disease in avian with severe economic losses in the poultry industry in many countries. Fusion protein (F) which plays a major role in the virus pathogenicity contains several regions that have a role in the fusion process. Mutation in the sequence of HR1 & HR2 regions of this protein prevents fusion of the viru...

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a challenging infectious agent worldwide. The ever growing antibiotic resistance has made the researchers to look for new anti-staphylococcal agents. Autolysins are staphylococcal enzymes that lyse bacterial cell wall for cell division. Autolysins can be used as novel enzybiotics (enzymes have antibiotic effects) for staphylococcal ...

Background: Targeting of CD20 antigen with monoclonal antibodies has become the mainstay in the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas and immunotherapeutic depletion of malignant B cells. Accessibility of antigen is one of the crucial factors in development of monoclonal antibodies against this antigen. One major problem in expression of full length CD20 is aggregation and misfolding. Therefore,...

BACKGROUND The mutually exclusive pattern of the major driver oncogenes in lung cancer suggests that other mutually exclusive oncogenes exist. We conducted a systematic search for tyrosine kinase fusions by screening all tyrosine kinases for aberrantly high RNA expression levels of the 3' kinase domain (KD) exons relative to more 5' exons. METHODS We studied 69 patients (including five never ...

End-to-end fusion of critically shortened telomeres in higher eucaryotes is presumed to be mediated by nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ). Here we describe two PCR-based methods to monitor telomere length and examine the fate of dysfunctional telomeres in Arabidopsis lacking the catalytic subunit of telomerase (TERT) and the DNA repair proteins Ku70 and Mre11. Primer extension telomere repeat amp...

Genomic locus at chromosome 9p21 that contains the CDKN2A and CDKN2B tumor suppressor genes is inactivated through mutations, deletions and promoter methylation in multiple human cancers. Additionally, the locus encodes an anti-sense RNA (ANRIL). Both hemizygous and homozygous deletions at the locus targeting multiple genes are fairly common in different cancers. We in this study investigated b...

BACKGROUND In myxoid liposarcoma (MLS), the t(12;16)(q13;p11) chromosomal translocation and its resultant fusion transcript, the human translocation liposarcoma (TLS)-CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) homologous protein (CHOP), are found in the majority of cases. On the other hand, the variant translocation, t(12;22)(q13;q12) creating the Ewing sarcoma (EWS)-CHOP fusion transcript, is dete...

Multiplex reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (mRT-PCR) has recently emerged as an alternative to cytogenetics. We designed and used simplified mRT-PCR system as a molecular screen for acute leukemia. Fifteen fusion transcripts were included: BCR-ABL1, PML-RARA, ZBTB16-RARA, RUNX1-RUNX1T1, CBFB-MYH11, DEK-NUP214, TCF3-PBX1, ETV6-RUNX1, MLL-AFF1, MLL-MLLT4, MLL-MLLT3, MLL-MLLT10, MLL...

Recent data have shown that the PML-RAR alpha fusion gene resulting from translocation t(15;17) is a highly reliable molecular marker of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). In this study performed on 97 Chinese patients with APL, the retrotranscriptase/polymerase chain reaction (RT/PCR) was used to evaluate the clinical relevance of the long (L) or short (S) PML-RAR alpha fusion mRNA isoforms a...