In-House Validation of Four Duplex Droplet Digital PCR Assays to Quantify GM Soybean Events.

Due to the increasing number of authorized events in the European Union, it is crucial for the official laboratories to enforce market control to detect and quantify genetically modified organisms. In this study, an in-house validation of quantitative duplex ddPCR methods was performed involving MON87701, MON87769, MON89788 and CV-127-9 assays with respect to the lectin reference gene. Since the ddPCR methods provide accurate quantification, show less sensitivity to PCR inhibitors and are more suitable for multiplexing compared to the real-time PCR, the optimization of the existing assays was performed with the exception of MON87701, according to the JRC Guidance documents and technical reports.

Comparative assessment of three commercial kits and in house optimized PCR assays for GMO screening in food and feed.

Screening strategies for GMO detection in food and feed are a crucial aspect in GMO testing laboratories for streamlining the analytical workflow and reducing turnaround time and costs. These strategies can be more or less complex or even be targeted according to the ingredients in the product, but whatever the choice, a good basic approach is generally based on the search for 35S promoter (P35S), nos-terminator (T-nos) and FMV promoter (P-FMV). In this study, we compare the singleplex real time PCR method for P35S, T-nos and P-FMV detection currently adopted by the Italian National Reference Laboratory for GM food and feed (NRL) with three commercial kits available on the market for giving a greater choice to consider the best approach suitable to the official control laboratories that are different from each other.

Aptamers as biomarkers for neurological disorders. Proof of concept in transgenic mice.

The act of selecting aptamers against blood serum leads to deep libraries of oligonucleotide sequences that bind to a range of epitopes in blood. In this study we developed an enriched aptamer library by performing positive selection against a pool of blood serum samples from transgenic mice (P301S) carrying the human tau gene and counter selecting against pooled blood serum from negative segregant (wild type) mice. We demonstrated that a large proportion of the aptamer sequences observed with next generation sequence (NGS) analysis were the same from selection round 5 and selection round 6.