Single sperm analysis of the trinucleotide repeat in the Huntington`s disease gene

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

OSTI ID:134501

Leeflang, E P; Zhang, L; Hubert, R ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (United States); and others

Huntington`s disease (HD) is one of several genetic diseases caused by trinucleotide repeat expansion. The CAG repeat is very unstable, with size changes occurring in more than 80% of transmissions. The degree of instability of this repeat in the male germline can be determined by analysis of individual sperm cells. An easy and sensitive PCR assay has been developed to amplify this trinucleotide repeat region from single sperm using two rounds of PCR. As many as 90% of the single sperm show amplification for the HD repeat. The PCR product can be easily detected on an ethidium bromide-stained agarose gel. Single sperm samples from an HD patient with 18 and 49 repeats were studied. We observed size variations for the expanded alleles while the size of the normal allele in sperm is very consistent. We did not detect any significant bias in the amplification of normal alleles over the larger HD alleles. Our preliminary study supports the observation made by PCR of total sperm that instability of the HD trinucleotide repeat occurs in the germline. HD preimplantation diagnosis on single embryo blastomeres may also possible.

• OSTI ID: 134501
• 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
DETECTION
GENES
GENETIC MAPPING
HEREDITARY DISEASES
INSTABILITY
NUCLEOTIDES
PATIENTS
POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION
SIZE
SPERMATOCYTES