Seventeen haplotypes were detected from the complete mitochondrial DNA control region sequences analyzed from eighty individuals of two Tibetan domestic sheep breeds. The nucleotide composition of all the sequences was 33.0% A, 29.7%T, 22.9%C and 14.4%G; G+C was 37.3%. The length of the sequences ranged from 1,107 bp to 1,259 bp. The difference between them was primarily due to 3-5 copy numbers...

The WD-repeat proteins are found in eukaryotes and play an important role in the regulation of a wide variety of cellular functions including signal transduction, pre-mRNA processing and cytoskeleton assembly. In this study, a cDNA encoding a WD repeat-containing protein 13 (GbWDR13) was cloned by PCR from Ginkgo biloba. The length of GbWDR13 gene is 1500 bp, encoding 496 amino acids. The predi...

In prokaryotes simple sequence repeats (SSRs) with unit sizes of 1-5 nucleotides (nt) are causative for phase and antigenic variation. Although an increased abundance of heptameric repeats was noticed in bacteria, reports about SSRs of 6-9 nt are rare. In particular G-rich repeat sequences with the propensity to fold into G-quadruplex (G4) structures have received little attention. In silico an...

Although genetic and environmental factors have been identified in the etiology of thyroid cancer, the specific genetic implications in sporadic thyroid tumors are poorly understood but, as in other common cancers, low-penetrance susceptibility genes are believed to be crucial in the tumorigenesis processes. Here, we have carried out a case-control study to investigate whether there is an assoc...

DNA ladder is commonly used to determine the size of DNA fragments by electrophoresis in routine molecular biology laboratories. In this study, we report a new procedure to prepare a DNA ladder that consists of 10 fragments from 100 to 1000 bp. This protocol is a combination of routinely employed methods: cloning, PCR, and partial digestion with restriction enzymes. DNA fragments of 100 bp with...

Cytoplasmic membrane-associated DNA (cmDNA) is a species of DNA that attaches to the plasma membrane and has physical and chemical properties that differ from those of bulk chromosomal and mitochondrial DNAs. Here, we used deep sequencing to analyze cmDNA and showed that satellite DNAs consisting of both of simple (CCATT)(N) repeats from the pericentromere regions of the chromosomes and 171-bp ...

To our knowledge, no one has heretofore shown a clear-cut example of a duplication of the splicing site. Such events could play an important role in the evolution of alternative splicing and/or the migration of splice sites. In addition, this particular case may be of interest to those studying the splicing mechanism in vivo. Koller and Orr (1985) aligned homologous regions from HLA-CW3 (Sodoye...

Background and Objective: Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a metabolic disorder that is caused by mutations in the phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) gene. The multiplicity of mutations in the PAH gene of PKU leads to the cases, in which the pathogenic mutation cannot be detected. In these cases, the variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR), which is the polymorphic marker associated with the PAH gene, is ...

Molecular genetic investigations of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have found associations with a variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) situated in the 3'-untranslated region of dopamine transporter gene (DAT1), a VNTR in exon 3 of dopamine receptor 4 gene (DRD4) and a microsatellite polymorphism located at 18.5 kb from the 5' end of dopamine receptor 5 gene (DRD5). A number ...