selected and repeated to confirm polymorphisms. Bands were excised from polyacrylamide gel
and re-amplified using the following conditions: 94°C for 60 s, 35 cycles of 30 s denaturing at
94°C, 30 s annealing at 55°C and 60 s extension at 72°C, and finally 10 min at 72°C to complete
extension. The PCR products were purified using a HiYield Gel PCR DNA Fragment Extraction
Kit (RBC, Taiwan) and ligated to pGEM-T easy vector (Promega, USA). Ligated plasmids were
transformed with Escherichia coli XL1-blue competent cells. Recombinant clones were selected
and plasmid extraction performed using a High-Speed Plasmid Mini Kit (Geneaid, Taiwan), after
which, the plasmid was sent for sequencing at Bio-Basic (Canada). Sequence data were then edited
and searched for homology using BLAST (available at http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi).