CLEC4M is a C-type lectin gene serving as cell adhesion receptor and pathogen recognition receptor. It recognizes several pathogens of important public health concern. In particular, a highly polymorphic variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) at the neck-region of CLEC4M had been associated with genetic predisposition to some infectious diseases. To gain insight into the origin and evolution of t...

BACKGROUND Human leukocyte antigens (HLA) complex and INS-IGF2 5'VNTR loci are principal determinants of the risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Carriage of class III allele is protective, while class I/I homozygosity increases the risk of T1DM. MATERIAL AND METHODS HLA and 5'VNTR allele frequencies were summarised and multivariate logistic regression models with interaction evaluation w...

5-Fluorouracil (5FU), a widely used chemotherapeutic drug, inhibits the DNA replicative enzyme, thymidylate synthase (Tyms). Prior studies implicated a VNTR (variable numbers of tandem repeats) polymorphism in the 5'-untranslated region (5'-UTR) of the TYMS gene as a determinant of Tyms expression in tumors and normal tissues and proposed that these VNTR genotypes could help decide fluoropyrimi...

Preeclampsia (PE) is a pregnancy-specific disorder that results in maternal mortality and morbidity. Growing evidence indicated that cytokines are involved in the pathogenesis of PE and interleukin-4 VNTR polymorphism could be implicated in altering the PE risk. The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible association between IL-4 VNTR polymorphism and susceptibility to PE in Iranian popu...

MUC1 is a heavily glycosylated mammalian transmembrane protein expressed by mucosal secretory tissues for both protection against microbial infection and lubrication. An important characteristic of MUC1 is its variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) containing several sites for O-glycosylation. VNTR length has been associated with many human diseases and with certain economically important tra...

Dear Editor Analysis of the phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH McKusick 261600) gene in different populations has revealed more than 320 different mutations associated with phenylketonuria (PKU). One of these mutations, IVS10nt546, results in severe PAH deficiency due to defective mRNA splicing. It accounts for about 40 percent of all mutant alleles in Turkish and between 10 to 20 percent of all mu...

Clinical and environmental Vibrio cholerae organisms collected from February 2004 through April 2005 were systematically isolated from 2 rural Bangladeshi locales. Their genetic relatedness was evaluated at 5 loci that contained a variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR). The observed minimal overlap in VNTR patterns between the 2 communities was consistent with sequential, small outbreaks from...