Minisatellite isoallelism, i.e. the occurrence of minisatellite alleles with different internal sequence composition but indistinguishable length, is a common limitation of minisatellite allele length analysis. Internal sequence variation can be used to distinguish such isoalleles, provided that detailed sequence knowledge of its basis is available. We now show that minisatellite isoalleles can...

Chain-like macromolecules in solution, whether biological or synthetic, transform from a spatially extended conformation to a compact one upon change of temperature or solvent qualities. This sharp transition plays a key role in various phenomena, including DNA condensation, protein folding, and the behaviour of polymer solutions. In biological processes such as DNA condensation the collapse is...

Polymorphism. Two alleles of the bovine prolactin gene were detected from single-stranded conformational polymorphism (SSCP) analysis of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) product. PCR Primer Sequences. 5' Primer ATT ATC TCT CTC ATT TCC TTT CA; 3' Primer ACT CTG CTG TCA CTG TCT GTA TT. PCR Conditions. 10 mM Tris, pH 8.3, 50 mM KC1, .01% gelatin, 1.5 mM MgC1, 100 pM deoxynucleoside triphosphate, .4...

We demonstrate an application of atomic force microscopy (AFM) for the structural analysis of long single-stranded RNA (>1 kb), focusing on 28S ribosomal RNA (rRNA). Generally, optimization of the conditions required to obtain three-dimensional (3D) structures of long RNA molecules is a challenging or nearly impossible process. In this study, we overcome these limitations by developing a method...

An entropy-controlled bending mechanism is presented to study the nanomechanics of microcantilever-based single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) sensors. First; the conformational free energy of the ssDNA layer is given with an improved scaling theory of thermal blobs considering the curvature effect; and the mechanical energy of the non-biological layer is described by Zhang’s two-variable method for lami...

Because the activity of mitochondrial glycerol phosphate dehydrogenase (mGPD) in the pancreatic 3-cell is normally among the highest of the body, but is low in the pancreatic islets of numerous rodent models of NIDDM and is reported to be low in the islets of the few humans studied with NIDDM (1,2), it has been questioned whether mGPD might be a diabetes candidate gene. Linkage studies have fai...

Most genetic regulatory mechanisms involve protein-DNA interactions. In these processes, the classical Watson-Crick DNA structure sometimes is distorted severely, which in turn enables the precise recognition of the specific sites by the protein. Despite its key importance, very little is known about such deformation processes. To address this general question, we have studied a model system, n...

O(6)-alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase (AGT) is a single-cycle DNA repair enzyme that removes pro-mutagenic O(6)-alkylguanine adducts from DNA. Its functions with short single-stranded and duplex substrates have been characterized, but its ability to act on other DNA structures remains poorly understood. Here, we examine the functions of this enzyme on O(6)-methylguanine (6mG) adducts in the fo...