Polymorphisms microsatellites

Nakao, M., Sako, Y. and Ito, A. (2003) Isolation of polymorphic microsatellite loci from the tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis. Infection Genetics and Evolution 3, 159-163. 

Wei J, Xu HM, Ramchand CN, Hemmings GP (1997) Is the polymorphic microsatellite repeat of the dopamine beta-hydroxylase gene associated with biochemical variability of the catecholamine pathway in schizophrenia Biol Psychiatry 41 762-767... 

Breen et al. [7] completed an in silico survey of potentially polymorphic STRs in the human genome and identified over 100,000 potentially polymorphic microsatellites. Other forms of variation such as small insertion deletions are more difficult to quantify, although they are likely to fall somewhere between the numbers of SNPs and VNTRs. 

Breen, G., R. Viknaraja, D. Collier, D. Sinclair, and M. R. Barnes. 2004. Distributions of polymorphic microsatellites in mammalian and other genomes. Manuscript in preparation. 

Roose-Amsaleg, C., Cariou-Phad, E., Vautrin, D., Taverneer, R., Solignac, M., 2006. Polymorphic microsatellite loci in Linum usitatissimum. Mol. Ecol. Notes 6, 796—799. 

Hoekstra, R., Criado-Fomelio, A., Fakkeldij, J., Bergman, J. and Roos, M.H. (1997) Microsatellites of the parasitic nematode Haemonchus contortus polymorphism and linkage with a direct repeat. Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology 89, 97-107. 

Although less common than SNPs, another type of genetic polymorphism is the variable nucleotide tandem repeat (VNTR), also called microsatellite [65]. 

Polymorphism A common (i.e., at least 1% prevalence of the minor allele in the population) sequence variation observed in an individual at a polymorphic site. Polymorphisms include nucleotide substitutions, insertions, deletions and microsatellites. They may be functional or silent, i.e., they do not result in detectable differences in gene expression or protein function. 

Microsatellites-the repeated units are typically 2-4 bp, and the length of the entire repeat is generally less than 150 bp. This dass often referred to as STRs (simple tandem repeats) is most typically amplified by a PCR for paternity testing, forensic cases, or gene linkage analysis (see Section II, Chapter 4 Polymorphic Markers and Linkage Analysis). 

Polymorphisms in the TNF gene, TNF receptor genes, and DNA microsatellites have been studied to help predict response to the TNF antagonists in RA patients. Polymorphisms of the TNF gene at positions -308, -238, and +489 have been well studied in this respect. TNF -308 and -238 polymorphisms are located in the promoter region of the TNF gene, whereas the +489 polymorphism is located in the... 

The TNF locus has five DNA microsatellites, TNFa through TNFe, which are highly polymorphic. The exact functional role of the DNA microsatellites is nnclear, althongh they may be important in DNA folding and conformation. Alternatively, they may have no fnnctional effects bnt may be markers of genetic variants in close proximity that have real fnnctional effects. Nonetheless, certain TNF microsatellites may inflnence TNF-a levels. TNFal and TNFd microsatellite polymorphisms have been associated with high levels of TNF-a and TNFa6 with low levels of TNF-a in vitro (59). 

Vanyukov, M.M., Moss, H.B., Gioio, A.E., Hughes, H.B., Kaplan, B.B., and Tarter, R.E. (1998) An association between a microsatellite polymorphism at the DRD5 gene and the liability to substance abuse pilot study. Behav Gent 28 75-82. 

A virtually untapped area for studying diversity in Echinococcus is the use of microsatellite DNA. Some microsatellite markers are available for E. multilocularis, following the earlier studies of Bretagne et al. (1996) who were able to use microsatellite DNA to divide isolates of E. multilocularis into three groups European, North American (Montana) and Japanese. More recently Nakao et al. (2003) isolated two microsatellite loci that were used to demonstrate population-level polymorphisms in E. multilocularis adult worms derived from wild red foxes collected from a limited geographical area of Hokkaido, Japan. 

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