Guinea pig ID-like families of SINEs.

Previous studies have indicated a paucity of SINEs within the genomes of the guinea pig and nutria, representatives of the Hystricognathi suborder of rodents. More recent work has shown that the guinea pig genome contains a large number of B1 elements, expanding to various levels among different rodents. In this work we utilized A-B PCR and screened GenBank with sequences from isolated clones to identify potentially uncharacterized SINEs within the guinea pig genome, and identified numerous sequences with a high degree of similarity (>92%) specific to the guinea pig.

Identification of an active ID-like group of SINEs in the mouse.

The mouse genome consists of five known families of SINEs: B1, B2, B4/RSINE, ID, and MIR. Using RT-PCR we identified a germ-line transcript that demonstrates 92.7% sequence identity to ID (excluding primer sequence), yet a BLAST search identified numerous matches of 100% sequence identity.

Identification of a unique Alu-based polymorphism and its use in human population studies.

Alu elements represent a family of short interspersed DNA elements (SINEs) found in primate genomes. These are members of a group of transposable elements that integrate into the genome by the process of retrotransposition. Recent integrations of Alu elements within the human genome have generated presence/absence variants useful as DNA markers in human population studies as well as in forensic and paternity analyses.