Clinical and environmental Vibrio cholerae organisms collected from February 2004 through April 2005 were systematically isolated from 2 rural Bangladeshi locales. Their genetic relatedness was evaluated at 5 loci that contained a variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR). The observed minimal overlap in VNTR patterns between the 2 communities was consistent with sequential, small outbreaks from...

Background: Cytokines are cell signaling molecules which upon release by cells facilitate the recruitment of immune-modulatory cells towards the sites of inflammation. Genetic variations in cytokine genes are shown to regulate their production and affect the risk of infectious as well as autoimmune diseases. Intron-3 of interleukin-4 gene (IL-4) harbors 70-bp variable number of tandem repeats (...

Members of the Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) are ubiquitous bacteria that can be found in water, food, and other environmental samples and are considered opportunistic pathogens for numerous animal species, mainly birds and pigs, as well as for humans. We have recently demonstrated the usefulness of a PCR-based mycobacterial interspersed repetitive-unit-variable-number tandem-repeat (MIRU-V...

Although historically considered as junk-DNA, tandemly repeated sequence motifs can affect human phenotype. For example, variable number tandem repeats (VNTR) with embedded enhancers have been shown to regulate gene transcription. The post-zygotic variation is the presence of genetically distinct populations of cells in an individual derived from a single zygote, and this is an understudied asp...

OBJECTIVES Brucellosis is the most common bacterial zoonosis in the world. Multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) analysis (MLVA) is a molecular method for genotyping bacterial species. Brucella abortus biovar I was isolated from most of the brucellosis-suspected patients in Korea. This study was conducted to investigate the ability of various MLVA primers that are used for molecular t...

We performed a genotype-phenotype association study to examine whether the insulin VNTR (INS VNTR) polymorphism located in the insulin gene promoter was associated with changes in insulin response to oral glucose. Two classes of INS VNTR alleles are observed in Caucasians, the "short" class I and the "long" class III. Plasma insulin and glucose concentrations and indices of insulin secretion (I...

Ischemic stroke (IS) is a multifactorial disorder, and genetic factors act as important contributors to its onset and progression. Inflammation is a key event that is closely associated with the pathophysiology of IS. The association of genetic polymorphisms of inflammatory cytokines with IS remains poorly understood. We investigated the relationship between the variable number of tandem repeat...

By conferring allele-specific transcriptional activity on the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene in humans, length variation of a repetitive sequence [(variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR)] in the MAOA promoter influences a constellation of personality traits related to aggressive and antisocial behavior and increases the risk of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Here, we have analy...