The recent flood of reports using real-time Q-PCR testifies to the transformation of this technology from an experimental tool into the scientific mainstream. Many of the applications of real-time Q-PCR include measuring mRNA expression levels, DNA copy number, transgene copy number and expression analysis, allelic discrimination, and measuring viral titers. The range of applications of real-ti...

Helicobacter pylori is one of the most common chronic infections in humans, in whom it is a key etiological factor in peptic ulcer disease, gastric mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma, and gastric adenocarcinoma. Humans are the bacterium's only host. Here we report the development of a real-time quantitative (Q) PCR-based assay to measure ureC gene copy number to detect H. pylori, based ...

The AMPLICOR cytomegalovirus (CMV) test, a new qualitative assay for the detection of CMV DNA in plasma, was compared to conventional methods and quantitative PCR (Q-PCR) assays by using leukocytes and plasma from 179 blood samples from subjects with AIDS. For the diagnosis of CMV disease, cell-based assays such as a Q-PCR with polymorphonuclear leukocytes (Q-PCR-PMNL) and a pp65 antigenemia as...

In 2007, a human Q fever epidemic started, mainly in the south eastern part of The Netherlands with a suspected indirect relation to dairy goats, and, to a lesser degree, to dairy sheep. This article describes the Q fever prevalences in Dutch dairy goat and dairy sheep bulk tank milk (BTM) samples, using a real-time (RT) PCR and ELISA. Results of BTM PCR and ELISA were compared with the serolog...

The root endophytic fungus, Piriformospora indica, colonizes roots of a large number of plant species including Cereals and Brasicaceae. There are several reports indicating that P. indica protects roots from different path- ogens. In the present study, rice plants were pre-inoculated with P. indica and were subsequently infected with Fusarium proliferatum, as the causal agent of root rot and c...

Real-time quantitative PCR systems (Q-PCR) for the rapid detection and quantification of microorganisms in clinical specimens employ oligodeoxyribonucleotide primers and probes for specificity, which makes them vulnerable to false negatives caused by sequence diversity in the template. Schaade et al. (J. Clin. Microbiol. 39:3809, 2001) reported a sequence variant (C630T) in the cytomegalovirus ...

We evaluate here the use of real-time quantitative PCR (q-PCR) as a method for screening for homologous recombinants generated in mammalian cells from either conventional gene-targeting constructs or whole BAC-based constructs. Using gene-targeted events at different loci, we show that q-PCR is a highly sensitive and accurate method for screening for conventional gene targeting that can reduce ...

Methods Reconstituted human gingival epithelia (RHGE) were challenged with two isoforms of PgLPS together with E. coli LPS as the positive control. mRNA and proteins were harvested from tissues and culture supernatants were collected. Expression of pro-inflammatory and antiinflammatory cytokines was evaluated by Q-PCR and ELISA. Involvement of pattern recognition receptors and signaling pathway...

PURPOSE Staging of the clinically N(0) neck in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) using ultrasound-guided, fine needle aspiration cytology (USgFNAC) has a false-negative rate of approximately 20% that might be caused by inaccurate cytology. Molecular analysis of aspirate residues might reduce the false-negative rate, and we therefore set up a quantitative reverse transc...