Evidence for meiotic drive at the myotonic dystrophy locus

Journal Article · Thu Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1994 · American Journal of Human Genetics

OSTI ID:134321

Shaw, A M; Barnetson, R A; Phillips, M F ^[1]

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1. Institute of Medical Genetics, Wales (United Kingdom); and others

Myotonic dystrophy (DM), an autosomal dominant disorder, is the most common form of adult muscular dystrophy, affecting at least 1 in 8000 of the population. It is a multisystemic disorder, primarily characterized by myotonia, muscle wasting and cataract. The molecular basis of DM is an expanded CTG repeat located within the 3{prime} untranslated region of a putative serine-threonine protein kinase on chromosome 19q13.3. DM exhibits anticipation, that is, with successive generations there is increasing disease severity and earlier age of onset. This mechanism and the fact that the origin of the disease has been attributed to one or a small number of founder chromosomes suggests that, in time, DM should die out. Meiotic drive has been described as a way in which certain alleles are transmitted to succeeding generations in preference to others: preferential transmission of large CTG alleles may account for their continued existence in the gene pool. There is evidence that a CTG allele with > 19 repeats may gradually increase in repeat number over many generations until it is sufficiently large to give a DM phenotype. We report a study of 495 transmissions from individuals heterozygous for the CTG repeat and with repeat numbers within the normal range (5-30). Alleles were simply classified as large or small relative to the other allele in an individual. Of 242 male meioses, 126 transmissions from parent to child were of the larger allele to their offspring (57.7%, p=0.014). This shows that there is strong evidence for meiotic drive favoring the transmission of the larger DM allele in unaffected individuals. Contrary to a previous report of meiotic drive in the male, we have shown that females preferentially transmit the larger DM allele. Taken together, the data suggest the occurrence of meiotic drive in both males and females in this locus.

• OSTI ID: 134321
• Report Number(s): CONF-941009--
• Journal Information: American Journal of Human Genetics, Journal Name: American Journal of Human Genetics Journal Issue: Suppl.3 Vol. 55; ISSN AJHGAG; ISSN 0002-9297
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

55 BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
BASIC STUDIES
AGE DEPENDENCE
DISEASES
DOMINANT MUTATIONS
GENES
GENETIC MAPPING
GENETICS
HEREDITARY DISEASES
HUMAN CHROMOSOME 19
MEIOSIS
MUSCLES
NUCLEOTIDES
PATIENTS
PHENOTYPE
PHOSPHOTRANSFERASES
PROTEINS
SERINE
SIZE
THREONINE