March 2007, SoftGenetics
-Hypervariable Mutation Detection
with Mutation Surveyor ®:
Introduction
Organisms contain areas in the genome with
hypervariability. Abacteriophage that infects Bordetella
bronchiseptica, a relative of the bacterium that causes
whooping cough, contains genes to specifically change its
proteins thus permitting binding to different cell receptors
(1). These genes allow the phage to rapidly
evolvenew variants that can recognize and attack bacteria
that may have become resistant to the previous phage. Similarly,
infection by the influenza virus requires receptor binding
through cell-specific tropism (2). Several
strains of Helicobacter pylori, the organism responsible
for many cases of peptic ulcers and stomach cancer, show
antibiotic resistance possibly due to efficiency ofDNA repair
or DNA polymerase (3). Additional causes
for high mutation frequency come from antigenic variation
found in sexually transmitted HIV (4) and
the development of drug resistance mutations as in the case
of the blood borne pathogen Hepatitis C virus (HCV). Projects
involving a high level of variability demand fully automated
calls of SNPs and homozygous and heterozygous indels to
identify variance between strains. Mutation Surveyor and
Mutation Explorer are the only software packages that detect
heterozygous indels by deconvoluting DNA sequence traces.
Mutation Surveyorand Mutation Explorer also provide an accuracy
>99% in detecting homozygous and heterozygous SNPs (5),
when both forward and reverse traces are of Ph red 20 quality.
Both packages feature ease of use, low-learning curve, full
automation, and an exclusive migration time comparison to
detect Indels.
For more details, download the Hypervariable
Mutation Detection with Mutation Surveyor PDF 
(142Kb)
