cell membrane (PS exposure detected by Annexin V binding) events. This is the first time that fetal NRBCs in the maternal circulation have been examined for PS exposure. Our analysis also differs from a recent report made by Kolialexi et al. (13), who reported a high percentage of Annexin V-positive fetal cells in the maternal circulation, which were proposed to be of an apoptotic nature. A maj...

One common problem in using the traditional DNA cloning procedure is that suitable natural restriction sites are often unavailable for a given task. Creating new restriction sites is often time consuming. Here, I describe a simple technique of producing "customized cohesive ends" by a combination of PCR primer design and lambda exonuclease digestion. These complementary cohesive ends can form h...

TA cloning is one of the simplest and most efficient methods for the cloning of PCR products. The procedure exploits the terminal transferase activity of certain thermophilic DNA polymerases, including Thermus aquaticus (Taq) polymerase. Taq polymerase has non-template dependent activity which preferentially adds a single adenosine to the 3'-ends of a double stranded DNA molecule, and thus most...

Cleavage of a DNA replication fork leads to fork restoration by recombination repair. In prokaryote cells carrying restriction-modification systems, fork passage reduces genome methylation by the modification enzyme and exposes the chromosome to attack by the restriction enzyme. Various observations have suggested a relationship between the fork and Type I restriction enzymes, which cleave DNA ...

Background: Staphylococcus aureus is a common pathogen in human that can be the cause of a wide range of infectious diseases including bacteremia, pneumonia, cellulitis, and osteomyelitis and skin and soft tissue infections. The coagulase enzyme is one of the most important virulence factors of this bacterium. The polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) Coa...

The excision and repair of mismatched base pairs is an essential task of cell maintenance. Several models have been proposed to describe how the hemimethylated d(GATC) sequence can direct Escherichia coli mismatch repair while residing on either side of a mismatch, at a separation distance of 1,000 bp or more. Anna Pluciennik and Paul Modrich report that a protein roadblock and breaks in the DN...

opportunistic fungal infections including candidiasis have increased dramatically in recent years. most medically important fungi are candida species. rapid identification od candida isolates to the species level in the clinical laboratory is necessary for more rapid and effective antifungal therapy and to facilitate hospital infection control measures. conventional morphological methods for id...

A method for the identification of three ixodid tick species; the cow tick (Boophilus annulatus), the camel tick (Hyalomma dromedarii) and the cattle tick (Hyalomma anatolicum excavatum) based on restriction enzyme analysis of the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS-2) in the nuclear ribosomal DNA was adopted. PCR products with MW 1375 bp, 1650 bp and 1835 bp from B. annulatus, H. dromedari...