Simple quantitative PCR approach to reveal naturally occurring and mutation-induced repetitive sequence variation on the Drosophila Y chromosome.

Autor: John C Aldrich, Keith A Maggert
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 10, p e109906 (2014)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109906
Popis: Heterochromatin is a significant component of the human genome and the genomes of most model organisms. Although heterochromatin is thought to be largely non-coding, it is clear that it plays an important role in chromosome structure and gene regulation. Despite a growing awareness of its functional significance, the repetitive sequences underlying some heterochromatin remain relatively uncharacterized. We have developed a real-time quantitative PCR-based method for quantifying simple repetitive satellite sequences and have used this technique to characterize the heterochromatic Y chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster. In this report, we validate the approach, identify previously unknown satellite sequence copy number polymorphisms in Y chromosomes from different geographic sources, and show that a defect in heterochromatin formation can induce similar copy number polymorphisms in a laboratory strain. These findings provide a simple method to investigate the dynamic nature of repetitive sequences and characterize conditions which might give rise to long-lasting alterations in DNA sequence.
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