Abstract

Nearly 30 hereditary disorders in humans result from an increase in the number of copies of simple repeats in genomic DNA. These DNA repeats seem to be predisposed to such expansion because they have unusual structural features, which disrupt the cellular replication, repair and recombination machineries. The presence of expanded DNA repeats alters gene expression in human cells, leading to disease. Surprisingly, many of these debilitating diseases are caused by repeat expansions in the non-coding regions of their resident genes. It is becoming clear that the peculiar structures of repeat-containing transcripts are at the heart of the pathogenesis of these diseases.

1. Department of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA.

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