BACKGROUND Leprosy is characterized by a spectrum of clinical manifestations that depend on the type of immune response against the pathogen. Patients may undergo immunological changes known as "reactional states" (reversal reaction and erythema nodosum leprosum) that result in major clinical deterioration. The goal of the present study was to assess the effect of Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) po...

Y chromosome haplotyping based on microsatellites and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has proved to be a powerful tool for population genetic studies of humans. However, the promise of the approach is hampered in the majority of nonhuman mammals by the lack of Y-specific polymorphic markers. We were able to identify new male-specific polymorphisms in the domestic cat Felis catus and 6 ad...

We show the presence of numerous short tandem repeats in the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) genome and assess their usefulness as molecular markers. The genome is shown to contain at least 24 microsatellite regions that exhibit length polymorphisms. Insertion-deletion polymorphisms at these short tandem repeats are common (80% of repeats examined are polymorphic among two laboratory strains and 1...

It has been suggested that the haplotypic relationship between microsatellite markers and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) is of considerable importance, as microsatellite markers can potentially be incorporated into haplotypes containing SNPs to increase marker density across a region of interest. However, SNPs and microsatellite markers have different mutation rates and durations, and i...

Penicillium marneffei is an emerging opportunistic dimorphic fungal pathogen that is endemic in Southeast Asia. A typing method based on the analysis of size polymorphisms in microsatellite loci was investigated. Three loci available from the GenBank database were identified to harbor microsatellites. PCR primers flanking the microsatellite repeats were designed with one primer in the set fluor...

High-resolution Y chromosome haplotype analysis was performed in 143 paternally unrelated Israeli and Palestinian Moslem Arabs (I&P Arabs) by screening for 11 binary polymorphisms and six microsatellite loci. Two frequent haplotypes were found among the 83 detected: the modal haplotype of the I&P Arabs (~14%) was spread throughout the region, while its one-step microsatellite neighbor, the moda...

CONTEXT Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a proinflammatory cytokine that is released by macrophages and lymphocytes and plays an important pathogenetic role in acute pancreatitis. It is present in large amounts in the serum and ascitic fluid in rats with experimental pancreatitis and its levels are elevated in humans with pancreatitis. Polymorphisms associated with inflammatory j...

AIM To investigate the influence of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) microsatellite polymorphisms on patient survival following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. METHODS We analyzed TNFa, TNFb, and TNFd microsatellites among 100 patients who underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from a human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-identical sibling donor at the Internal Clinic of the...

Previously, we found that the genotype of 42 out of 198 mouse microsatellite loci, which are distributed among all chromosomes except the Y chromosome, changed from monomorphism to polymorphism (CMP) in a genetically modified inbred mouse strain. In this study, we further examined whether CMP also relates to the homologous recombination in gene knockout (KO) mouse strains. The same 42 microsate...