A response to: BAK1 gene variation and abdominal aortic aneurysms—results may have been prematurely overrated. Questions of sequence fidelity, intraorganismal genetic heterogeneity, the nature of pseudogenes, and RNA editing

We thank Küry et al. [2010] for their letter. They raise a number of issues with regard to our initial article that reported on variations in BAK1 gene (MIM] 600516) sequence expressed in the abdominal aorta (AA) tissue when compared with leukocyte genomic DNA sequence [Gottlieb et al., 2009]. In a subsequent letter [Gottlieb et al., 2010], we noted that when we compared the genomic BAK1 sequence in matching blood and tissue samples, the blood and tissue BAK1 genomic sequences were identical to the reference BAK1 genomic sequence, which primarily suggested that an unusual form of RNA editing could possible be involved. Küry et al. [2010] have raised three issues with regard to possible explanations for our results.