Background Cytochrome aromatase p450, encoded by the gene CYP19A1, is a key enzyme for estrogen biosynthesis. Among the multiple promoters of CYP19A1, the proximal promoter PII is the most active ones in ovary and endometrium. Endometriosis is a chronic estrogen dependent gynecological condition characterized by the presence of ectopic glands and stroma outside the uterine cavity. Recently, evi...

Heterochromatin formation involves the nucleation and spreading of structural and epigenetic features along the chromatin fiber. Chromatin barriers and associated proteins counteract the spreading of heterochromatin, thereby restricting it to specific regions of the genome. We have performed gene expression studies and chromatin immunoprecipitation on strains in which native centromere sequence...

dna methylation as epigenetic mark plays a key role in normal differential and developmental processes as well as in dynamic gene regulation at the genomic level. to assess dna methylation pattern in different developmental stages of aeluropus littoralis, methylation sensitive amplified polymorphism (msap) was used. methylation and demethylation status at the ccgg recognition site were tracked ...

Recent evolutions of somatic cloning by nuclear transfer are reported, especially in the bovine species where potential applications are underway for biomedicine in association with transgenesis, or for agriculture by improving livestock. The overall efficiency of this biotechnology remains low in terms of viable offspring, but significant progress has been achieved on the different steps of th...

The search for the genetic defects in constitutional diseases has so far been restricted to direct methods for the identification of genetic mutations in the patients' genome. Traditional methods such as karyotyping, FISH, mutation screening, positional cloning and CGH, have been complemented with newer methods including array-CGH and PCR-based approaches (MLPA, qPCR). These methods have reveal...