The estimated mean copy per partition (λ) is the essential information from a digital PCR (dPCR) experiment because λ can be used to calculate the target concentration in a sample. However, little information is available how to statistically compare dPCR runs of multiple runs or reduplicates. The comparison of λ values from several runs is a multiple comparison problem, which can be solved usi...

The tandem ligation of DNA sequences within plasmid vectors is hindered by the inability to force the orientation of subsequently ligated DNA fragments and the inherent instability of repeated sequences when grown in bacterial hosts. Improvements have been made in the latter by the introduction of several E. coli strains by commercial suppliers (STBL2; Life Technologies, Gaithersburg, MD, USA o...

PCR is widely used for the amplification of DNA and reverse-transcribed RNA. In recent years, real-time PCR has been introduced as a new technique for mRNA quantitation. However, because of the high cost of real-time PCR equipment and supplies, especially using custom-made probes, quantitative RT-PCR is a valuable alternative method. Several quantitative PCR protocols describe the use of a sing...

Designing primers and probes for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a preliminary and critical step that requires the identification of highly conserved regions in a given set of sequences. This task can be challenging if the targeted sequences display a high level of diversity, as frequently encountered in microbiologic studies. We developed Gemi, an automated, fast, and easy-to-use bioinforma...