The study of common fragile sites has its roots in the early cytogenetic investigations of the fragile X syndrome. Long considered an interesting component of chromosome structure, common fragile sites have taken on novel significance as regions of the genome that are particularly sensitive to certain forms of replication stress, which are frequently rearranged in cancer cells. In recent years,...

We describe a model for the thermodynamics and dynamics of glass-forming liquids in terms of excitations from an ideal glass state to a Gaussian manifold of configurationally excited states. The quantitative fit of this three parameter model to the experimental data on excess entropy and heat capacity shows that "fragile" behavior, indicated by a sharply rising excess heat capacity as the glass...

DNA sequences have been located at the fragile X site by in situ hybridization and by the mapping of breakpoints in two somatic cell hybrids that were constructed to break at the fragile site. These hybrids were found to have breakpoints in a common 5-kilobase Eco RI restriction fragment. When this fragment was used as a probe on the chromosomal DNA of normal and fragile X genotype individuals,...

BACKGROUND Fragile skin is a poorly understood skin condition, particularly in the general adult population. There are currently limited epidemiological data on the prevalence of fragile skin in adults. The objectives of this study were to assess the prevalence of perceived fragile skin across different skin types in representative samples of the general adult populations in Mexico and Russia, ...

T thermodynamics: we find a specific heat linear in T and a local spectral density of spin excitations, χ′′ loc(ω) ∼ ω for a spin glass state which is marginally stable to fluctuations in the replicon modes. For small S, the spin-glass order is fragile, and a spin-liquid state with χ′′ loc ∼ tanh(ω/2T) dominates the properties over a significant range of T and ω. We argue that the latter state ...

Fragile sites consist of isochromatid chromosome breaks which take place at specific sites along a chromosome and segregate as simple Mendelian traits.1 2 While the Xq28 fragile site is regarded as a marker for X linked mental retardation, the fragile sites on autosomes are regarded as normal uncommon variants. The present case supports the idea that the presence of fragile sites may constitute...

Females with fragile X syndrome, the most common form of inherited developmental and learning problems, are known to be impaired in executive function. The current study is the first to investigate the performance of females with fragile X on a cognitive interference task utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Fourteen females with fragile X and 14 age-matched healthy controls ...

Common fragile sites are loci that form chromosome gaps or breaks when DNA synthesis is partially inhibited. Fragile sites are prone to deletions, translocations, and other rearrangements that can cause the inactivation of associated tumor suppressor genes in cancer cells. It was previously shown that ATR is critical to fragile-site stability and that ATR-deficient cells have greatly elevated f...