The principal limitation in forensic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing is the low power of discrimination that is obtained when common "mtDNA types" are involved in a case. Currently, an "mtDNA type" refers to the sequence within hypervariable regions I and II (HV1/HV2) of the control region, approximately 610 bp. In Caucasians, the most common HV1/HV2 type is found in approximately 7% of the p...

Background Almost 15% of couples suffer from infertility and the men account for 50% of infertility factors. The most prevalent reason of male infertility is due to problems in sperm production that include low number of sperms or low mobility of sperm and production of sperm with improperly function. Sperm cell needs ATP to perform its functions which provided by mitochondria. Presence of poin...

Oxidative stress has consistently been linked to breast carcinogenesis, and mitochondria play a significant role in regulating reactive oxygen species generation. In our previous study, we found that increased levels of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number and the presence of mitochondrial length heteroplasmies in the hypervariable (HV) regions 1 and 2 (HV1 and HV2) in peripheral blood are ass...

Although quantitatively minor replication-independent (replacement) histone variants have been found in a wide variety of organisms, their functions remain unknown. Like the H3.3 replacement variants of vertebrates, hv2, an H3 variant in the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila, is synthesized and deposited in nuclei of nongrowing cells. Although hv2 is clearly an H3.3-like replacement va...

We have evaluated the efficacy of short-interfering RNAs targeting the nucleoprotein gene and also the brain immune response in treated and non-treated infected mice. Mice were inoculated with wild-type virus, classified as dog (hv2) or vampire bat (hv3) variants and both groups were treated or left as controls. No difference was observed in the lethality rate between treated and non-treated gr...

All three genes encoding histone H3 proteins were cloned and sequenced from Tetrahymena thermophila. Two of these genes encode a major H3 protein identical to that of T. pyriformis and 87% identical to the major H3 of vertebrates. The third gene encodes hv2, a quantitatively minor replication independent (replacement) variant. The sequence of hv2 is only 85% identical to the animal replacement ...

In the field of forensic DNA testing, sequencing regions of the mitochondrial genome is performed when insufficient genomic DNA is present for traditional autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) testing. Sequencing coding region polymorphisms in the mitochondrial genome can be useful for resolving individuals who have the identical HV1 and HV2 control region sequence. Various methods and strategies...

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of mitochondrial DNA length heteroplasmy for the first hypervariable segment (HV1) and second hypervariable segment (HV2) regions were performed using size-based separation of fluorescently-labeled polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products by capillary electrophoresis. In this report, the relative proportions of length heteroplasmies in individuals were dete...

Annulotrematoides bryconi sp. n. is described and illustrated from specimens collected from gills of characiform fish, Brycon cephalus (Günther, 1869), in pisciculture ponds from Pirassununga, São Paulo, Brazil. Diagnostic characters of the new species are the tegument of trunk showing annulations, except on the cephalic regiona, and copulatory complex comprising sclerotized male copulatory org...

We investigated the role of gonococcal outer membrane protein PII (also called Opa protein) in nonopsonic adherence to human neutrophils. Gonococcal outer membranes, purified Opa in detergent (Opa), purified Opa in liposomes (Opa+ lips), and peptides composing the second hypervariable (HV2) region of OpaB (strain FA1090) in liposomes (pepHV2 lips) were tested for their abilities to inhibit subs...