Diagnosis of Acanthamoeba by microscopic examination, culture, and polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) has several limitations (sensitivity, specificity, lack of detection of several strains, cost of testing for discrimination among strains). We developed a new high-resolution melting real-time PCR (HRM) to detect and characterize Acanthamoeba infections. HRM performances were evaluated with stra...

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether using hydrogen-rich medium (HRM) to increase hydrogen levels in endothelial cells (ECs) protects ECs from apoptosis induced by advanced glycation end products (AGEs). The thoracic aorta was removed from 2-3-year-old Sprague-Dawley rats, and ECs were isolated and cultured. After culturing ECs in the presence of AGEs and/or with HRM for 24...

BACKGROUND High resolution melting (HRM) is a simple, flexible and low-cost mutation screening technique. The methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene encoding a critical enzyme, potentially affects susceptibility to some congenital defects like congenital heart disease (CHD). We evaluate the performance of HRM for genotyping of the MTHFR gene C677T locus in CHD cases and healthy contro...

Background: The High Resolution Melting (HRM) method is a new scanning method for detecting unknown changes in DNA and its advantages have persuaded researchers to recruit it as a screening method. Objectives: Here, we developed a HRM method to screen R188H SNP (rs3218536) of XRCC2 and compared the results with a well known PCR-RFLP technique. Materials and Methods: Genomic ...

BACKGROUND DNA methylation is a highly characterized epigenetic modification of the human genome that is implicated in cancer. The altered DNA methylation patterns found in cancer cells include not only global hypomethylation but also discrete hypermethylation of specific genes. In particular, numerous tumor suppressor genes undergo epigenetic silencing because of hypermethylated promoter regio...

PCR revolutionized genetic analysis by enabling selective amplification of targeted sequences that, as a consequence of massive enrichment, could undergo genetic analysis by a variety of methodologies. The subsequent addition of a double-stranded DNA intercalating dye to the master mix was a key adaptation to PCR that allowed monitoring of amplification in real time, thus enabling quantificatio...

lentiviral vectors (lvs) are useful vehicle for genetransfer to dividing and non-dividing cells and genetic manipulations. however, the use of lentiviruses in studies requires an accurate titration technique.quantitative real-time pcr (qpcr) is a sensitive technique for the indication and quantitation of retrovirals particles. in this study, we used the qpcr for lentiviral vector titeration. th...