Canine and bovine ras family expression detected and discriminated by use of polymerase chain reaction.

Cellular proto-oncogenes are highly conserved genes thought to be critical in cell growth and differentiation. In this study, we used human sequence designed oligonucleotide primers to detect and discriminate c-Ha-ras-1, c-Ki-ras-2 and c-N-ras genes of dogs and cows by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of genomic DNA (DNA/PCR). Further, we have applied PCR for analysis of expressed mRNA transcribed from the RAS genes (RNA/PCR).