Universal Primers Used for Species Identification of Foodstuff of Animal Origin: Effects of Oligonucleotide Tails on PCR Amplification and Sequencing Performance

M13 universal non-homologous oligonucleotide tails incorporated into universal primers have been shown to improve amplification and sequencing performance. However, a few protocols use these tails in the field of food inspection. In this study, two types of M13 tails (by Steffens and Messing) were selected to assess their benefits using universal cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) and 16S ribosomal RNA gene (16SrRNA) primers in standard procedures. The primer characteristics were tested in silico. Then, using 20 DNA samples of edible species (birds, fishes, and mammals), their performance during PCR amplification (band recovery and intensity) and sequencing (sequence recovery, length, and Phred score) was assessed and compared. While 16SrRNA tailed and non-tailed primers performed similarly, differences were found for COI primers. Messing’s tails negatively affected the reaction outputs, while Steffens’ tails significantly improved the band intensity and the length of the final contigs based on the individual bidirectional read sequence. This different performance could be related to a destabilization effect of certain tails on primers with unfavorable mismatches on the annealing region. Even though our results cannot be generalized because the tail performances are strictly dependent on laboratory conditions, they show that appropriate tails can improve the overall throughput of the analysis, supporting food traceabilit

Mobile Robots In Office Logistics

In this paper, we describe an office logistic robot designed to execute tasks such as collecting and delivering mail, delivering print outs, and collecting waste baskets. Our concern is not so much the development of new methods,since for most of the problems which we had to address we found theoretical solutions in the literature. Rather we are concerned with adapting these solutions to real-world surroundings with little or no modifications of the environment, and combining them into a system which provides a variety of services. In the following sections we describe the system's various components, as well as its overall architecture. We conclude with a discussion of an experiment which demonstrates the performance of our system. INTRODUCTION The technical and scientific progress made in robotics over the last two decades suggests that the field is ready to create robots for applications outside of industrial production processes. The use of robot technology is particularly desira..