Transthyretin gene (TTR) intron 1 elucidates crocodylian phylogenetic relationships

Phylogenetic relationships among group II intron ORFs.

Group II introns are widely believed to have been ancestors of spliceosomal introns, yet little is known about their own evolutionary history. In order to address the evolution of mobile group II introns, we have compiled 71 open reading frames (ORFs) related to group II intron reverse transcriptases and subjected their derived amino acid sequences to phylogenetic analysis. The phylogenetic tre...

Transthyretin familial amyloid polyneuropathy (TTR‐FAP): Parameters for early diagnosis

Background Familial transthyretin amyloidosis is a life-threatening disease presenting with sensorimotor and autonomic polyneuropathy. Delayed diagnosis has a detrimental effect on treatment and prognosis. To facilitate diagnosis, we analyzed data patterns of patients with transthyretin familial amyloid polyneuropathy (TTR-FAP) and compared them to polyneuropathies of different etiology for cli...

Treatment of transthyretin (TTR) amyloid cardiomyopathy with an antisense oligonucleotide inhibitor of TTR synthesis

Background While transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis is usually characterized by peripheral and autonomic neuropathy, a majority of patients also have evidence of restrictive cardiomyopathy. In addition, amyloid cardiomyopathy may occur in the elderly without the presence of a mutant form of TTR. Both the hereditary and wild-type TTR amyloidosis are characterized by progressive restrictive cardiomy...

Gene diversity and phylogenetic relationships in parrots inferred from the nuclear seventh intron of β-fibrinogen gene sequences

Comparison of intron-containing and intron-lacking human genes elucidates putative exonic splicing enhancers.

Of the rules used by the splicing machinery to precisely determine intron-exon boundaries only a fraction is known. Recent evidence suggests that specific short sequences within exons help in defining these boundaries. Such sequences are known as exonic splicing enhancers (ESE). A possible bioinformatical approach to studying ESE sequences is to compare genes that harbor introns with genes that...