Comparative analyses on disease and nondisease (ND) genes have greatly facilitated the understanding of human diseases. However, most studies have grouped all the disease genes together and have performed comparative analyses with other ND genes. Thus, the molecular mechanism of disease on which disease genes can be separated into monogenic and polygenic diseases (MDs and PDs) has been ignored ...

BENCHMARKS Recently developed technologies such as microarray analysis allow researchers to determine the genome-wide patterns of expressed genes. This information provides insight into complex regulatory networks, enables the identification of new or underexplored biological processes, and implicates genes in various disease processes (1). While mi-croarray analysis provides genome-wide inform...

Eukaryotic genes are distributed along chromosomes as clusters of highly expressed genes termed RIDGEs (Regions of IncreaseD Gene Expression) and lowly expressed genes termed anti-RIDGEs, interspersed among genes expressed at intermediate levels or not expressed. Previous studies based on this observation suggested a dual mechanism of gene regulation, where, in addition to transcription factors...

BACKGROUND Housekeeping genes have been commonly used as reference to normalize gene expression and protein content data because of its presumed constitutive expression. In this paper, we challenge the consensual idea that housekeeping genes are reliable controls for expression studies in the retina through the investigation of a panel of reference genes potentially suitable for analysis of dif...

Streptococcus mutans, consisting of serotypes c, e, f and k, is an oral aciduric organism associated with the initiation and progression of dental caries. A total of 135 independent Streptococcus mutans strains from caries-free and caries-active subjects isolated from various geographical locations were examined in two versions of an MLST scheme consisting of either 6 housekeeping genes [accC (...

PURPOSE The genus Aeromonas is a pathogen that is well known to cause severe clinical illnesses, ranging from gastroenteritis to sepsis. Accurate identification of A. hydrophila, A. caviae, and A. veronii is important for the care of patients. However, species identification remains difficult using conventional methods. The aim of this study was to compare the accuracy of different methods of i...