Barrett's esophagus is a useful model for the study of carcinogenesis, as the metaplastic columnar epithelium that replaces squamous esophageal epithelium is at elevated risk for development of adenocarcinoma. We examined telomere length and chromosomal instability (CIN) in Barrett's esophagus biopsies using fluorescence in situ hybridization. To study CIN, we selected centromere and locus-spec...

Current DNA compression algorithms work by finding similar repeated regions within the DNA sequence and then encoding these regions together to achieve compression. Our study on chromosome sequence similarity reveals that the length of similar repeated regions within one chromosome is about 4.5% of the total sequence length. The compression gain is often not high because of these short lengths....

rDNA nontranscribed spacer (NTS) lengths of Drosophila mercatorum have been measured in individuals from several geographic regions. Individuals from the different geographic subpopulations share some length fragments but are in general distinct. The length differences, both within and between individuals, arise from different copy numbers of a 250-bp repeating unit that is localized to one par...

Telomeres, specialised structures that protect chromosome ends, play a critical role in preserving chromosome integrity. Telomere dynamics in the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) are of particular interest in light of the emergence of devil facial tumour disease (DFTD), a transmissible malignancy that causes rapid mortality and threatens the species with extinction. We used fluorescent in...

The maintenance of an appropriate number of telomere repeats by telomerase is essential for proper chromosome protection. The action of telomerase at the telomere terminus is regulated by opposing activities that either recruit/activate the enzyme at shorter telomeres or inhibit it at longer ones, thus achieving a stable average telomere length. To elucidate the mechanistic details of telomeras...

The efficiency of hybrid seed production can be improved by increasing the percentage of exserted stigma, which is closely related to the stigma length in rice. In the chromosome segment substitute line (CSSL) population derived from Nipponbare (recipient) and Kasalath (donor), a single CSSL (SSSL14) was found to show a longer stigma length than that of Nipponbare. The difference in stigma leng...

Inactivation of a suppressor gene by deletion of chromosome 9 is a candidate initiating event in bladder carcinogenesis. We have used 13 polymorphic markers spanning the length of chromosome 9 in order to map the region of deletion in human bladder carcinomas. In the majority of tumors loss of heterozygosity was found at all informative sites along the chromosome, indicating deletion of the ent...

The recent discovery that the gene causing Huntington's disease (HD) resides on chromosome 4 has generated increased interest in this autosome. Chromosome 4 contains two of the more informative conventional genetic markers, GC and MNS, but most loci have been assigned to it by recombinant DNA techniques. There are currently more anonymous DNA fragments detecting restriction fragment length poly...

During metaphase, chromosome position at the mitotic spindle equator is regulated by forces exerted kinetochore microtubules and polar ejection forces. However, role of arising from mechanical coupling sister fibers with bridging in alignment unknown. Here we develop an optogenetic approach for acute removal microtubule crosslinker PRC1 to disassemble show that they promote alignment. Tracking ...

We present a genome assembly from an individual male Sarcophaga subvicina (the lesser worm flesh fly; Arthropoda; Insecta; Diptera; Sarcophagidae). The sequence is 71 megabases in span. Most of the (95.91%) scaffolded into six chromosomal pseudomolecules, with X sex chromosome assembled. mitochondrial has also been assembled and 16.7 kilobases length. Gene annota...