Retinoic acid, thyroid hormone, and vitamin D receptors preferentially activate target genes through response elements that consist of direct repeat arrangements of a core recognition motif of consensus sequence AGGTCA. We present evidence that the preference for direct repeat elements arises from two fundamental differences from steroid hormone receptors. First, retinoic acid, thyroid hormone,...

BACKGROUND The inverted repeat is a common feature of protein-binding sites in DNA. The two-fold symmetry of the inverted repeat corresponds to the two-fold symmetry of the protein that binds to it. In most natural inverted-repeat binding sites, however, the DNA sequence does not have perfect two-fold symmetry. Our study of how a site-specific recombinase recognizes an inverted-repeat binding s...

Bas1p, a divergent yeast member of the Myb family of transcription factors, shares with the proteins of this family a highly conserved cysteine residue proposed to play a role in redox regulation. Substitutions of this residue in Bas1p (C153) allowed us to establish that, despite its very high conservation, it is not strictly required for Bas1p function: its substitution with a small hydrophobi...

OBJECTIVES The study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of off-pump transapical mitral valve-in-ring implantation and to test the performance of a custom-made self-expandable stent valve, in comparison with the standard SAPIEN valve. METHODS Acute experiments were performed in five pigs. Animals (mean weight 58.4 ± 7.3 kg) underwent mitral valve annuloplasties under cardiopulmonary bypass usin...

Expansion of (AGC)n repeats has been associated with genetic disorders called triplet-repeat diseases such as Huntington's disease (HD), myotonic muscular dystrophy (DM) and Kennedy's disease. To gain insight into the abnormal behavior of these repeats, we studied their structural properties in supercoiled DNA. Chemical probing revealed that, under physiological salt and pH conditions, Zn2+ or ...

Over 3:6 million bases of DNA sequence from chromosome III of the C. elegans have been determined. The availability of this extended region of contiguous sequence has allowed us to analyze the nature and prevalence of repetitive sequences in the genome of a eukaryotic organism with a high gene density. We have assembled a Repeat Pattern Toolkit (RPT) to analyze the patterns of repeats occurring...

The heterochromatin in eukaryotic genomes represents gene-poor regions and contains highly repetitive DNA sequences. The origin and evolution of DNA sequences in the heterochromatic regions are poorly understood. Here we report a unique class of pericentromeric heterochromatin consisting of DNA sequences highly homologous to the intergenic spacer (IGS) of the 18S.25S ribosomal RNA genes in pota...

More than 15 human genetic diseases have been associated with the expansion of trinucleotide DNA repeats, which may involve the formation of non-duplex DNA structures. The slipped-strand nucleation of duplex DNA within GC-rich trinucleotide repeats may result in the changes of repeat length; however, such a mechanism seems less likely for the AT-rich (GAA)n*(TTC)n repeats. Using two-dimensional...