CPC Class C12Q

Probes for formaldehyde (FA) including a homoallylamine trigger group attached to a detectable moiety are provided. Aspects of the probes include luminogenic or fluorogenic probes, such as a probe including a quencher in energy-receiving proximity to a fluorophore. Also provided are methods of using the probes for sensitive and bio orthogonal detection of FA in a sample. Aspects of the methods include selectively reacting the probe with the formaldehyde in the sample to a release (e.g., via a 2-aza-Cope rearrangement) a reporter group comprising a detectable moiety. Aspects of the methods detecting formaldehyde in a cell, tissue, organ or fluid in a subject. Also provided are compositions and kits including the subject probes that find use in practicing various embodiments of the subject methods.

The present invention relates to peptides, nucleic acids and cells for use in immunotherapeutic methods. In particular, the present invention relates to the immunotherapy of cancer. The present invention furthermore relates to tumor-associated cytotoxic T cell (CTL) peptide epitopes, alone or in combination with other tumor-associated peptides that serve as active pharmaceutical ingredients of vaccine compositions that stimulate anti-tumor immune responses. The present invention relates to several novel peptide sequences and their variants derived from HLA class I and HLA class II molecules of human tumor cells that can be used in vaccine compositions for eliciting anti-tumor immune responses.

Provided are nucleic acids encoding engineered polymerases comprising at least one modification in a motif A and/or at least one modification in a motif B of the polymerase and engineered polymerases encoded by the nucleic acids. Also provided are engineered DNA polymerases comprising a variant of SEQ ID NO:1, SEQ ID NO:2, or SEQ ID NO:3, the variant being at least 80% identical to SEQ ID NO:1, SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:3 and comprising an amino acid substitution at one or more positions selected from the group consisting of L408, Y409, P410, R484, A/L485, and I486. Methods, vectors, kits, and compositions comprising the nucleic acids and compositions, methods and kits comprising the engineered polymerases are also provided.

Compositions and methods for nucleic acid isolation from an environmental or biological sample comprising nucleic acid-analysis interferents, particularly from microbiome-containing samples, are provided.