The Japanese eel population has dramatically declined since the 1970s. In order to conserve this species, the background genetic structure affecting these populations should be well documented. Previous genetic studies of this species have produced seemingly conflicting results, ranging from no detectable heterogeneity to small, but statistically significant variance. This study investigates th...

Previous studies have shown that microsatellite (MS) DNA instability (MSI) is detectable in sputum cells in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether asthma and COPD could be distinguished at the MS DNA level. DNA was extracted from sputum cells and white blood cells from 63 COPD patients, 60 non-COPD smokers, 36 asthmatics ...

Descriptions of A. gambiae population structure based on microsatellite loci and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) were incongruent. High differentiation of populations was measured across the Rift Valley by microsatellites, but no differentiation was detected based on mtDNA. To resolve this conflict, we compared the old data to new mtDNA data using the same specimen previously genotyped in microsatell...

Microsatellite instability is associated with 10% to 15% of colorectal, endometrial, ovarian, and gastric cancers, and has long been used as a diagnostic tool for hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal carcinoma-related cancers. Tumor-specific length alterations within microsatellites are generally accepted to be a consequence of strand slippage events during DNA replication, which are uncorrected ...

In some tumors, defects in mismatch repair enzymes lead to errors in the replication of simple nucleotide repeat segments. This condition is commonly known as microsatellite instability (MSI) because of the frequent mutations of microsatellite sequences. Although the MSI phenotype is well recognized in some colon, gastric, pancreatic, and endometrial cancers, reports of MSI in breast cancer are...

Genetic alterations in the microsatellite DNA level have been successfully detected in sputum samples of patients with COPD and have been shown to be disease specific. Furthermore, previous studies have shown that inflammation coexists in the nasal mucosa of patients with COPD. The aim of this study was to assess the presence of MSI in nasal cytological samples of patients with COPD comparing t...

Microsatellite DNAs (or SSRs) are important genomic components involved in many important biological functions. SSRs have been extensively exploited as molecular markers for diverse applications including genetic diversity, linkage/association mapping of gene/QTL, marker-assisted selection, variety identification and evolution analysis. However, a comprehensive database or web service for study...

Recent arguments have suggested that tumor DNA in cancer patients could be found in plasma, but different points remain unclear. Using a series of 117 head and neck squamous cell carcinoma tumors, our goals for this study were: (a) to quantify the amount of plasma DNA; (b) to evaluate the presence of plasma tumor DNA; and (c) to analyze the clinical relevance of tests based on plasma DNA analys...

Microsatellites are the markers of choice for a variety of population genetic studies. The recent advent of next-generation pyrosequencing has drastically accelerated microsatellite locus discovery by providing a greater amount of DNA sequencing reads at lower costs compared to other techniques. However, laboratory testing of PCR primers targeting potential microsatellite markers remains time c...

BACKGROUND Methylation in the promoter region of the DNA mismatch repair genes hMLH1 and hMSH2 and microsatellite instability at three loci were analyzed in the tumor tissue from patients with head and neck cancer. METHODS Microsatellite instability and promoter methylation were investigated by PCR, denaturing-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and digestion with methylation-specific restrict...