Inorganic arsenicals are worldwide environmental contaminants that affect molecular characteristics in biological systems and lead to genomic and epigenomic instability as well as epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT). In this study, we aimed to investigate whether low levels of sodium arsenite (iAsIII) can influence EMT and genomic instability through microsatellite analysis. We have also de...

Evidence for genomic regions influencing systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) were assessed in a whole genome linkage analysis in 211 African American and 160 white families as part of the GenNet network of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-sponsored Family Blood Pressure Program. Multipoint regression and variance components linkage methods were used to analyze 372 polymorphic...

Powdery mildew caused by Erysiphe cichoracearum is an important fungal disease which threatens tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) production. The objective of this study was to determine DNA markers linked to genomic regions associated with resistance to powdery mildew in tobacco through the association mapping approach. Seventy tobacco geno-types were fingerprinted using 26 simple se-quence repeat...

Sexual selection drives the evolution of traits involved in the competition for mates. Although considerable research has focused on the evolution of sexually selected traits, their underlying genetic architecture is poorly resolved. Here I address the pleiotropic effects and genomic locations of sexually selected genes. These two important characteristics can impose considerable constraints on...

Common pandora (Pagellus erythrinus) is a benthopelagic marine fish belonging to the teleost family Sparidae, and a newly recruited species in Mediterranean aquaculture. The paucity of genetic information relating to sparids, despite their growing economic value for aquaculture, provides the impetus for exploring the genomics of this fish group. Genomic tool development, such as genetic linkage...

We present the use of our recently described multiple-loci polymorphic DNA markers ("alumorphs") for linkage mapping of the human genome. By using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with an Alu-specific primer we could reveal, in a single experiment, up to 20 genomic polymorphisms seen as the presence or absence of amplified DNA fragments originating from genomic segments flanked by Alu repeat...

Maize (Zea mays L.) serves as model plant for heterosis research and is the crop where hybrid breeding was pioneered. We analyzed genomic and phenotypic data of 1254 hybrids of a typical maize hybrid breeding program based on the important Dent × Flint heterotic pattern. Our main objectives were to investigate genome properties of the parental lines (e.g., allele frequencies, linkage disequilib...

New high-throughput, population-based methods and next-generation sequencing capabilities hold great promise in the quest for common and rare variant discovery and in the search for "missing heritability." However, the optimal analytic strategies for approaching such data are still actively debated, representing the latest rate-limiting step in genetic progress. Since it is likely a majority of...

Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP)-based genetic linkage maps allow us to dissect the genetic control of quantitative traits (QT) by locating individual quantitative trait loci (QTLs) on the linkage map and determining their type of gene action and the magnitude of their contribution to the phenotype of the QT. We have performed such an analysis for two traits in common bean, invol...