Alpha satellite DNA is a repetitive sequence known to be a major DNA component of centromeres in primates (order Primates). New World monkeys form one major taxon (parvorder Platyrrhini) of primates, and their alpha satellite DNA is known to comprise repeat units of around 340 bp. In one species (Azara's owl monkey Aotus azarae) of this taxon, we identified two types of alpha satellite DNA cons...

Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA) is a slowly progressive motor neuron disease. Lower and primary sensory neuronopathy is one of the major neuropathological changes that occurs in SBMA. However, many sings are common to SBMA and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and SBMA patients are sometimes diagnosed with ALS. Leuprorelin may be used to treat SBMA, but an accurate diagnosis is nec...

We determined a value of 10.34 +/- 0.04 base pairs (bp) per turn for the helical repeat of bent DNA sequences of the form A6N4-A6N5 by estimating the sequence repeat required to produce a planar curve, as judged from the maximum in the electrophoretic mobility anomaly of multimers containing different sequence repeats (10.00, 10.33, 10.50, 10.67, and 11.00 bp per turn). This result provides the...

We analyzed mutations of 7 vitamin K-dependent protein and cytochrome P450 2C9 genes in 45 patients and investigated whether any contribute to the large interpatient variability in the warfarin dose-effect relationship. Total clearance and daily dose, INR and INR/Cp, were used as pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic indexes, respectively. Patients were grouped by genotype based on a single polym...

Although the crystal structure of nucleosome core particle is essentially symmetrical in the vicinity of the dyad, the linker histone binds asymmetrically in this region to select a single high-affinity site from potentially two equivalent sites. To try to resolve this apparent paradox we mapped to base-pair resolution the dyads and rotational settings of nucleosome core particles reassembled o...

The cis-acting elements for the early and late promoters, as well as the enhancer in the prototype strains of human polyomavirus BK (BKV) are located within a 500 bp intergenic region. We previously studied the specificity of protein binding in this region in vitro and showed that the interaction of proteins of the nuclear factor-1 (NF-1) family is crucial for early promoter activity. We have n...

The segregation of plasmid F of Escherichia coli is highly reliable. The Sop partition locus, responsible for this stable maintenance, is composed of two genes, sopA and sopB and a centromere, sopC, consisting of 12 direct repeats of 43 bp. Each repeat carries a 16-bp inverted repeat motif to which SopB binds to form a nucleoprotein assembly called the partition complex. A database search for s...

The chloroplast genome of Pelargonium × hortorum has been completely sequenced. It maps as a circular molecule of 217,942 bp, and is both the largest and most rearranged land plant chloroplast genome yet sequenced. It features two copies of a greatly expanded inverted repeat (IR) of 75,741 bp each, and consequently diminished single copy regions of 59,710 bp and 6,750 bp. It also contains two d...

Variable numbers of tandem repeats (VNTRs) are a class of highly informative and widely dispersed genetic markers. Despite their wide application in biological science, little is known about their mutational mechanisms or population dynamics. The objective of this work was to investigate four summary measures of VNTR allele frequency distributions: number of alleles, number of modes, range in a...

The POL30 gene of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae encodes the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), a protein required for processive DNA synthesis by DNA polymerase delta and epsilon. We examined the effects of the pol30-52 mutation on the stability of microsatellite (1- to 8-bp repeat units) and minisatellite (20-bp repeat units) DNA sequences. It had previously been shown that this m...