Complementary DNA clones representing genes in SENCAR mouse epidermis, the expression of which is induced 4 h after one topical application of the tumor promoter 12-0-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) were isolated. Of 56 isolated complementary DNA clones, 32 were identified to be identical to either metallothioneins (MT-I and Mi ll) or endogenous retroviral like (VL30) sequences. In situ h...

Mutations in mitochondrial DNA are an important cause of human disease and from a therapeutic standpoint, these disorders are currently untreatable. New studies now show that a non‐cognate mitochondrial aminoacyl tRNA synthetase can overcome the respiratory defect caused by an mt‐tRNA mutation and that the isolated carboxy‐terminal domain of human mt‐leucyl tRNA synthetase can ameliorate the pa...

We have examined the chromatin structure of the metallothionein (MT) gene region in MT- S49 mouse lymphoma cells and in derivatives which express MT-I alone, MT-II alone, or both genes. In all lines, these genes are contained in a 16-kilobase pair region between two DNase I sensitive sites: one site located 5.3 kilobase pairs 5' of MT-II (the 5' gene) is present in naked DNA and retained in the...

BACKGROUND It has been hypothesized in the literature that exposure to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (50 or 60 Hz) may lead to human health effects such as childhood leukemia or brain tumors. In a previous study investigating multiple types of cells from brain and kidney of the mouse (Acta Neuropathologica 2004; 107: 257-264), we found increased unrepaired nuclear DNA single st...

Whole mitochondrial (mt) genome analysis enables a considerable increase in analysis throughput, and improves the discriminatory power to the maximum possible phylogenetic resolution. Most established protocols on the different massively parallel sequencing (MPS) platforms, however, invariably involve the PCR amplification of large fragments, typically several kilobases in size, which may fail ...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is packed into highly organized structures called mitochondrial nucleoids (mt-nucleoids). To understand the organization of mtDNA and the overall regulation of its genetic activity within the mt-nucleoids, we identified and characterized a novel mtDNA packaging protein, termed Glom (a protein inducing agglomeration of mitochondrial chromosome), from highly condensed mt...

The telomerase ribonucleoprotein is a promising target for cancer therapy, as it is highly active in many human malignancies. A novel telomerase targeting approach combines short interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown of endogenous human telomerase RNA (hTer) with expression of a mutant-template hTer (MT-hTer). Such combination MT-hTer/siRNA constructs induce a rapid DNA damage response, telomere un...

Mitochondrial (mt) genes and genomes are among the major sources of data for evolutionary studies in birds. This places mitogenomic studies in birds at the core of intense debates in avian evolutionary biology. Indeed, complete mt genomes are actively been used to unveil the phylogenetic relationships among major orders, whereas single genes (e.g., cytochrome c oxidase I [COX1]) are considered ...