PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism electrophoretic patterns of amplified ureB and ureC of Helicobacter pylori were compared between spouses after digestion with restriction endonucleases. Twenty of 21 couples, both members of which were positive for H. pylori, showed ureB and ureC patterns that differed between spouses. We concluded that in Japan, interspousal transmission of H. pylor...

In this issue, Nucleic Acids Research presents five Survey and Summary articles that describe the historical development of studies on restriction endonucleases and summarize much of our current understanding of this diverse and complex group of enzymes. The first of these articles, entitled ‘Highlights of the DNA cutters: a short history of the restriction enzymes’ (1), describes seminal studi...

Restriction endonucleases are widely used in laboratory applications from recombinant DNA technology to diagnostics, but engineering of restriction enzymes by structure-guided design and in vivo directed evolution is at an early stage. Here, we report the use of an in vitro compartmentalization system for completely in vitro selection of restriction enzymes. Compartmentalization of a single gen...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE Conventional identification of a clinical isolate of mycobacteria primarily based on culture characteristics and biochemical tests needs several weeks and may remain inconclusive. This study was undertaken to develop a new rapid method to identify the mycobacterial isolates at species level by gene amplification restriction analysis using primers encoding 16S-23S rRNA int...

A molecular method based on PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) ribosomal DNA sequences was designed to rapidly identify fungal species, with members of the genus Pleurotus as an example. Based on the results of phylogenetic analysis of ITS sequences from Pleurotus, a PCR-RFLP endonuclease autoscreening (PRE Auto) program was develop...

A physical map of the Casphalia extranea densovirus genome (CeDNV) was constructed. The size of the intact viral genome was estimated to be 4.9 kilobases or 1.6 MDa (single strand). The double-stranded CeDNV genomic DNA was cleaved with 26 restriction endonucleases and 20 restriction sites were mapped on the genome. The CeDNV DNA restriction map was compared to those of other densoviruses. Sout...