The causative mutation in the majority of cases of myotonic dystrophy has been shown to be the expansion of a CTG trinucleotide repeat, but the mechanism(s) by which this repeat leads to the very complex symptomatology in this disorder remains controversial. We have developed a highly sensitive and quantifiable assay, based on competitive RT-PCR, to test the hypothesis that the expansion disrup...

UNLABELLED Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is due to an unstable expansion of CTG repeat in the DMPK gene (19q13.3). The CTG repeat is highly polymorphic (5 to 37) in healthy individuals. According to the hypothesis that expanded (CTG)n alleles originated from larger normal alleles, there may exist a correlation between the prevalence of DM1 and the frequency of large size normal alleles. Stron...

Background and aims: Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is an autosomal dominant multisystemic disorder, caused by an expanded CTG repeat on chromosome 19. The disorder can present both in children and adults. The overall purpose of this study was to gain further insight on neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive aspects, vision and motor function in individuals with congenital and childhood DM1. Furt...

Myotonic dystrophy (DM1) affects multiple organs, shows age-dependent progression and is caused by CTG expansions at the DM1 locus. We determined the DM1 CpG methylation profile and CTG length in tissues from DM1 foetuses, DM1 adults, non-affected individuals and transgenic DM1 mice. Analysis included CTCF binding sites upstream and downstream of the CTG tract, as methylation-sensitive CTCF bin...

Expansion of trinucleotide repeats is associated with a growing number of human diseases. The mechanism and timing of expansion of the repeat tract are poorly understood. In humans, trinucleotide repeats show extreme meiotic instability, and expansion of the repeat tract has been suggested to occur in the germ-line mitotic divisions or postmeiotically during early divisions of the embryo. Studi...

Myotonic dystrophies or dystrophia myotonica (DM) is a clinical syndrome that includes myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), myotonic dystrophy type 2 (DM2), myotonic dystrophy type 3 (DM3), and so forth. The terminology was recommended by the new nomenclature for myotonic dystrophies of an International Panel for Consensus. Previous studies have shown that DM1 is caused by the expansion of a cytosi...

Purpose The most common cause of Fuchs' endothelial corneal dystrophy (FECD) is an intronic CTG repeat expansion in TCF4. Expanded CUG repeat RNA colocalize with splicing factor, muscleblind-like 1 (MBNL1), in nuclear foci in endothelium as a molecular hallmark. Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a neuromuscular disorder caused by a CTG repeat expansion in the 3'-untranslated region (UTR) of DM...

Although triplet repeat DNA sequences are scattered throughout the human genome, their biological function remains obscure. To aid in correlating potential structures of these nucleic acids with their function, we propose their classification based on the presence or absence of a palindromic dinucleotide within the triplet, the G + C content, and the presence or absence of a homopolymer. Five c...

Myotonic dystrophy (DM) is associated with an underlying CTG trinucleotide repeat expansion at a locus on chromosome 19q13.3. We have determined the repeat length in 23 DM patients with varying clinical severity of symptoms and various sizes of repeat amplification. We confirm that as in previous studies there is no strong correlation between repeat length and clinical symptoms but find that th...

Since the original description of SCA8 in 1999, 1 several reports have been published on the occurrence of the SCA8 gene CTG repeat expansion in various populations. These studies have shown that, in addition to finding the SCA8 expansion in familial and sporadic ataxia patients, expanded alleles can also be found in non-ataxic subjects, psychiatric patients, and in patients with various other ...