To the Editors: Pelucchi et al. found that folate deficiency increases prostate cancer risk (1). They attributed this to DNA hypomethylation and uracil misincorporation leading to chromosome breaks. However, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) should be considered as well. Like chromosomal DNA, mtDNA is vulnerable to breaks due to the uracil excision process (2). Crott et al. found that folate reduced th...

BACKGROUND The most common and also the most often assayed mtDNA deletion mutation, degrees mtDNA 4,977 sub has been demonstrated in various types of human cancer. However, knowledge about degrees mtDNA 4,977 in lung carcinoma is poor. AIM To study the 4,977 bp deletions of mitochondrial DNA ( degrees mtDNA 4,977) in lung cancer, adjacent histologically normal and normal lung tissue and its p...

Previous studies analysing the incidences of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions and mtDNA content in unfertilized oocytes in relation to donors' age have been controversial. The objective of the study was to compare these two parameters in unfertilized oocytes and relate them to the donors' age. Fifty-two women donated 155 unfertilized metaphase II (MII) oocytes. The incidence of 4977 bp delet...

The specificity of deletion formation was studied using tests involving reversion of palindromic insertion mutations. Insertions of a TnS-related transposon at 13 sites in the ampicillin-resistance (amp) gene of plasmid pBR322 were shortened to a nested set of perfect palindromes, 22, 32 and 90 bp long. We monitored frequencies of reversion to Amp', which is the result of deletion of the palind...

Humans commonly carry pathogenic bacteria asymptomatically, but the molecular factors underlying microbial asymptomatic carriage are poorly understood. We previously reported that two epidemiologically unassociated serotype M3 group A Streptococcus (GAS) carrier strains had an identical 12-bp deletion in the promoter of the gene encoding Mga, a global positive gene regulator. Herein, we report ...