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Cytogenetically defined terminal deletions are thought to be a major, yet underappreciated, cause of mental retardation and multiple congenital anomalies. The mechanisms by which terminal deletions arise and are stabilized are not completely understood; although all ends of human chromosomes must h ...

The aim of this work was to identify NRL mutations in a panel of 200 autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (adRP) families. All samples were subjected to heteroduplex analysis of the three exons of the NRL gene, and HphI restriction digest analysis of exon 2 (to identify the S50T mutation). Famili ...

Holoprosencephaly (HPE) is a severe brain malformation which results from incomplete cleavage of the forebrain during early embryogenesis. The aetiology of HPE is very heterogeneous. Among the genetic factors, SIX3, which is considered to be the functional orthologue of Drosophila genes sine oculis ...

Interleukin 9 (IL9) is involved in mast cell maturation and the enhancement of IgE production by B cells. Furthermore, linkage data in human and mice have suggested that IL9 may contribute to asthma. Since our genetic analysis of the 5q cytokine cluster did not support a genetic role for the IL9 gen ...

Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a genetically heterogeneous disorder characterised by progressive spasticity of the lower limbs. Beside ‘pure’ forms of HSP, ‘complicated’ forms are reported, where spasticity occurs associated with additional symptoms. We recently described an Italian ...

We previously mapped a distinctive autosomal dominant vacuolar neuromyopathy on human chromosome 19p13 in an 8 cM region, delimited by D19S209 and D19S177 markers. We now report the fine mapping of the disease locus within an interval of 250 Kb by haplotype analysis performed using a set of 11 nove ...

Fechtner syndrome is an autosomal dominant disorder which has been thought to be a variant of Alport syndrome. It is characterised by nephritis, sensorineural hearing loss and eye abnormalities, as well as by macrothrombocytopenia and polymorphonuclear inclusion bodies. Recently, the Fechtner synd ...

Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD) and spastic paraplegia type 2 (SPG2) are X-linked developmental defects of myelin formation affecting the central nervous system (CNS). They differ clinically in the onset and severity of the motor disability but both are allelic to the proteolipid protein gene (PL ...

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing disorder affecting the gastro-intestinal tract and is subdivided into two main subtypes: Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Although the aetiology of IBD is unknown, a strong genetic susceptibility is suggested and different c ...

Steroid 21-hydroxylase deficiency is caused by defectiveness of the CYP21 gene. Such defects have presumably originated from interactions with the nearby CYP21P pseudogene during evolution. We studied these mechanisms by comparing the genetic variability of CYP21, CYP21P, and CYP21P/CYP21 hybrids ( ...