Potential DNA methods for measuring the human heritable mutation rate

Veterinary cytogenetics: past and perspective

Cytogenetics was conceived in the late 1800s and nurtured through the early 1900s by discoveries pointing to the chromosomal basis of inheritance. The relevance of chromosomes to human health and disease was realized more than half a century later when improvements in techniques facilitated unequivocal chromosome delineation. Veterinary cytogenetics has benefited from the information generated in human cytogenetics which, in turn, owes its theoretical and technical advancement to data gathered from plants, insects and laboratory mammals. The scope of this science has moved from the structure and number of chromosomes to molecular cytogenetics for use in research or for diagnostic and prognostic purposes including comparative genomic hybridization arrays, single nucleotide polymorphism array-based karyotyping and automated systems for counting the results of standard FISH preparations. Even though the counterparts to a variety of human diseases and disorders are seen in domestic animals, clinical applications of veterinary cytogenetics will be less well exploited mainly because of the cost-driven nature of demand on diagnosis and treatment which often out-weigh emotional and sentimental attachments. An area where the potential of veterinary cytogenetics will be fully exploited is reproduction since an inherited aberration that impacts on reproductive efficiency can compromise the success achieved over the years in animal breeding. It is gratifying to note that such aberrations can now be tracked and tackled using sophisticated cytogenetic tools already commercially available for RNA expression analysis, chromatin immunoprecipitation, or comparative genomic hybridization using custom-made microarray platforms that allow the construction of microarrays that match veterinary cytogenetic needs, be it for research or for clinical applications. Judging from the technical refinements already accomplished in veterinary cytogenetics since the 1960s, it is clear that the importance of the achievements to date are bound to be matched or out-weighed by what awaits to be accomplished in the not-too-far future.

Risk calculations for hereditary effects of ionizing radiation in humans

A prediction of the extent to which an additional dose of ionizing radiation increases the natural germ cell mutation rate, and how much such an increase will affect the health status of future human populations is part of the service that human geneticists are expected to offer to human society. However, more detailed scrutiny of the difficulties involved reveals an extremely complex set of problems. A large number of questions arises before such a prediction can be given with confidence; many such questions cannot be answered at our present state of knowledge. However, such predictions have recently been attempted. The 1988 report of the United Nations Scientific Committee for the Effects of Atomic Radiation and the fifth report of the Committee on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation of the US National Research Council have presented a discussion of the human genetics problems involved. Empirical data from studies on children of highly radiation-exposed parents, e.g. parents exposed to the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or parents belonging to populations living on soil with high background radiation, have been mentioned in this context. Whereas precise predictions are impossible as yet because of deficiencies in our knowledge of medical genetics at various levels, the bulk of the existing evidence points to only small effects of low or moderate radiation doses, effects that will probably be buried in the "background noise" of changing patterns of human morbidity and mortality.

Unexpected behavior of H2Kb mutant DNAs in denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis

Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) is based upon the different melting behaviors of DNA molecules in a chemical denaturant gradient according to their sequences. This technique has recently become a widespread tool to detect mutations. The introduction of a GC-clamp enables the detection of most single base differences between two DNA molecules. As a test system we have applied the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in combination with DGGE to detect a number of mutations in the mouse H2Kb DNA sequence. A wide variety of spontaneous in vivo mutations of this haplotype have been reported in the C57BL/6J mouse strain and are clustered in the alpha 1 and alpha 2 domains. The combination of PCR and DGGE revealed almost all base changes present in the H2Kb mutants used. However, most of the PCR products of these mutants showed melting behavior which is not easily predicted. We suggest that in addition to current simple theory, which considers that the migration of a DNA molecule in a denaturing gradient depends primarily on its initial melting behavior, additional factors such as secondary structure in partially melted molecules may play a role and can be used to detect mutations.