Positive fragile X microsatellite associations point to a common mechanism of dynamic mutation evolution
- Institute for Basic Research, Staten Island, NY (United States)
We recently reported that the size of fragile X gene (FMR1) triplet repeats and two nearby microsatellites show positive allele-size associations. The larger alleles of microsatellite DXS548, located {approximately}150 kb proximal to the FMR1 CGG repeat, and of FRAXAC1 (AC1), located 7 kb proximal to the FMR1 CGG repeat, tend to occur together, and smaller alleles also tend to occur together. Also, fragile X chromosomes are more commonly found on the larger combined microsatellite-allele haplotypes. We now have extended these observations to include two other nearby repeats, FRAXAC2 (AC2), a complex three-part polymorphism located 12 kb distal, and the FRAXE triplet repeat, located 600 kb distal. We divided the chromosomes into controls with FMR1 repeats of <60 and fragile X chromosomes with repeats {>=}60, since FMR1 alleles with repeats {>=}60 show high intergenerational instability. In the 133 controls, previously analyzed for AGG interspersions, and in 119 fragile X chromosomes, we found that these repeats show nonrandom size associations. To describe this numerically, we calculated correlation coefficients for the repeat lengths. These repeats showed significantly positive correlations with each other. Although FRAXE alleles showed no correlation with the control repeats, they did have positive correlations with fragile X chromosome microsatellites (AC1 and AC2 but not DXS548), which may reflect the larger recombinational distances involved and the possibly more recent origin of the fragile X mutations. The correlations tended to be higher for the number of 3{prime} pure CGGs than for total FMR1 repeats in controls. These findings strengthen our hypothesis that there may be a common underlying mutational mechanism that simultaneously affects these repeat loci. 13 refs., 1 tab.
- OSTI ID:
- 381292
- Journal Information:
- American Journal of Human Genetics, Vol. 58, Issue 3; Other Information: PBD: Mar 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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