Species-wide distribution of highly polymorphic minisatellite markers suggests past and present genetic exchanges among house mouse subspecies.

Background: Four hypervariable minisatellite loci were scored on a panel of 116 individuals of various geographical origins representing a large part of the diversity present in house mouse subspecies. Internal structures of alleles were determined by minisatellite variant repeat mapping PCR to produce maps of intermingled patterns of variant repeats along the repeat array. To reconstruct the genealogy of these arrays of variable length, the specifically designed software MS_Align was used to estimate molecular divergences, graphically represented as neighbor-joining trees.

Multiple polymorphic loci determine basal hepatic and splenic iron status in mice.

Polymorphisms of genes linked to iron metabolism may account for individual variability in hemochromatosis and iron status connected with liver and cardiovascular diseases, cancers, toxicity, and infection. Mouse strains exhibit marked differences in levels of non-heme iron, with C57BL/6J and SWR showing low and high levels, respectively. The genetic basis for this variability was examined using quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis together with expression profiling and chromosomal positions of known iron-related genes.

Minisatellites show rare and simple intra-allelic instability in the mouse germ line.

Minisatellites provide very informative systems for analyzing processes of tandem repeat DNA turnover in humans. The mouse genome also contains authentic minisatellites, but none has yet been found to show high levels of instability. Indirect evidence using minisatellite variant repeat mapping by PCR in Mus musculus subspecies suggested that mouse minisatellites mutate at a rate below 10(-3) per gamete and mainly by intra-allelic events.

A novel single molecule analysis of spontaneous and radiation-induced mutation at a mouse tandem repeat locus.

Expanded simple tandem repeat (ESTR) loci include some of the most unstable DNA in the mouse genome and have been extensively used in pedigree studies of germline mutation. We now show that repeat DNA instability at the mouse ESTR locus Ms6-hm can also be monitored by single molecule PCR analysis of genomic DNA. Unlike unstable human minisatellites which mutate almost exclusively in the germline by a meiotic recombination-based process, mouse Ms6-hm shows repeat instability both in germinal (sperm) DNA and in somatic (spleen, brain) DNA.