Surface Melting Curve Analysis with R

Authors

Stefan Rödiger, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Lausitz University of Applied Sciences
Alexander Böhm, Lausitz University of Applied Sciences
Ingolf Schimke, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Date of this Version

12-2013

Document Type

Article

Citation

The R Journal (December 2013) 5(2); Editor: Hadley Wickham

Comments

Copyright 2013, The R Foundation. Open access material. License: CC BY 3.0 Unported

Abstract

Nucleic acid Melting Curve Analysis is a powerful method to investigate the interaction of double stranded nucleic acids. Many researchers rely on closed source software which is not ubiquitously available, and gives only little control over the computation and data presentation. R in contrast, is open source, highly adaptable and provides numerous utilities for data import, sophisticated statistical analysis and presentation in publication quality. This article covers methods, implemented in the MBmca package, for DNA Melting Curve Analysis on microbead surfaces. Particularly, the use of the second derivative melting peaks is suggested as an additional parameter to characterize the melting behavior of DNA duplexes. Examples of microbead surface Melting Curve Analysis on fragments of human genes are presented.