Genes, Volume 3, Issue 3

Whole-genome and exome sequencing have already proven to be essential and powerful methods to identify genes responsible for simple Mendelian inherited disorders. These methods can be applied to complex disorders as well, and have been adopted as one...

Ionizing radiation damages DNA and induces mutations as well as chromosomal reorganizations. Although radiotherapy increases survival among cancer patients, this treatment does not come without secondary effects, among which the most problematic is g...

Basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF2) is a potent wide-spectrum mitogen whose overexpression is associated with immortalization and unregulated cell proliferation in many tumors. The FGF2 gene locus is bi-directionally transcribed to produce FGF2 mRN...

There is a mounting body of evidence that somatic transposition may be involved in normal development of multicellular organisms and in pathology, especially cancer. Epigenetic Tracking (ET) is an abstract model of multicellular development, able to...

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 10 (SCA10) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease with a spectrum of phenotypes. SCA10 is caused by a pentanucleotide repeat expansion of the ATTCT motif within intron 9 of ATAXIN 10 (ATXN10). Patients present...

Copy Number Variations (CNVs) and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) have been the major focus of most large-scale comparative genomics studies to date. Here, we discuss a third, largely ignored, type of genetic variation, namely changes in tande...

Numerous molecular abnormalities contribute to the genetic derangements involved in tumorigenesis. Chromosomal translocations are a frequent source of these derangements, producing unique fusion proteins with novel oncogenic properties. EWS/ETS fusio...

Ancestral genome reconstruction can be understood as a phylogenetic study with more details than a traditional phylogenetic tree reconstruction. We present a new computational system called REGEN for ancestral bacterial genome reconstruction at both...

One of the most unexpected insights that followed from the completion of the human genome a decade ago was that more than half of our DNA is derived from transposable elements (TEs). Due to advances in high throughput sequencing technologies it is no...

Expanding genomic data on plant pathogens open new perspectives for the development of specific and environment friendly pest management strategies based on the inhibition of parasitism genes that are essential for the success of infection. Identifyi...