Mutations in several causative genes have been linked to monogenic forms of Alzheimer's disease (AD) or Parkinson's disease (PD). To look for possible common pathogenic mechanisms underlying age-related neurodegeneration in AD and PD, we employed genetic approaches to investigate systematically the roles of these gene products (e.g. presenilins (PS) for AD; Parkin, DJ-1, PINK1 and LRRK2 for PD)...

An important challenge in the field of Parkinson's disease (PD) is to develop disease modifying therapies capable of stalling or even halting disease progression. Coupled to this challenge is the need to identify disease biomarkers, in order to identify pre-symptomatic hallmarks of disease and monitor disease progression. The answer to these challenges lies in the elucidation of the molecular c...

Gene expression studies in mammals and simpler eukaryotes have highlighted the central role that chromatin structure and modifications play in both the activation and repression of transcription. Aberrant chromatin structure can cause human genetic disease. Here we discuss recent progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie three human genetic diseases linked to perturbation...

This paper describes a knowledge-based system for molecular diagnostics, and its application to fully automated diagnosis of X-linked genetic disorders. Molecular diagnostic information is used in clinical practice for determining genetic risks, such as carrier determination and prenatal diagnosis. Initially, blood samples are obtained from related individuals, and PCR amplification is performe...

Establishing meaningful relationships between genetic variations and clinical disease is a fundamental goal for all human genetic disorders. However, these genotype–phenotype correlations remain incompletely characterized and sometimes conflicting for many diseases. Lesch-Nyhan disease is an X-linked recessive disorder that is caused by a wide variety of mutations in the HPRT1 gene. The gene en...

World wide data on presymptomatic testing for Huntington's disease using closely linked DNA markers show that 1479 persons at risk received completed test results up to the end of 1991. Testing has been carried out in 19 countries, with at least 88 centres involved, and numbers have levelled off after a peak in 1990. Only 5% of those at risk have been tested in six countries with the longest es...

The Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS) is an X-linked recessive genetic disease in which the molecular defect is unknown. In 15 families with WAS, seven restriction fragment length polymorphic loci from the X chromosome were used to map the disease locus. Of the eight intervals studied, the likelihood of the WAS gene lying between DXS7 (Xp11.3) and DXS14 (Xp11) was at least 128 times higher than th...

background: downy mildew caused by plasmopara halstedii is one of the most devastating diseases of sunflower worldwide. so far several dominant resistance genes designated as pl have been identified and their molecular markers linked to these genes are available. however, no information on the resistance genes is available in iranian lines. objective: in this study, the presence of three map-ba...