Signal and sensitivity enhancement through optical interference coating for DNA and protein microarray applications.

Optical inteference (OI) coated slides with unique optical properties were utilized in microarray analyses, demonstrating their enhanced detection sensitivity over traditional microarray substrates. The OI coating is comprised of a proprietary multilayered, dielectric, thin-film interference coating located beneath the functional coating (aminosilane or epoxysilane). It is designed to enhance the fluorescence in the Cy3 and Cy5 channel by increasing the light absorption of the dyes by about 6-fold and by redirecting emitted fluorescence into the detector during scanning, resulting in a theoretical limit of about 12-fold signal amplification.

Molecular characterization of Brucella abortus chromosome II recombination.

Large-scale genomic rearrangements including inversions, deletions, and duplications are significant in bacterial evolution. The recently completed Brucella melitensis 16M and Brucella suis 1330 genomes have facilitated the investigation of such events in the Brucella spp. Suppressive subtractive hybridization (SSH) was employed in identifying genomic differences between B.

The genome sequence of the facultative intracellular pathogen Brucella melitensis.

Brucella melitensis is a facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen that causes abortion in goats and sheep and Malta fever in humans. The genome of B. melitensis strain 16M was sequenced and found to contain 3,294,935 bp distributed over two circular chromosomes of 2,117,144 bp and 1,177,787 bp encoding 3,197 ORFs.