HUMAN GENETICS

Robert Richards (Adelaide Children's Hospital, Australia): "This paper was the first of a series describing the finding of heritable unstable elements in human genetic disease, from our laboratory and those of J.-L. Mandel (Strasbourg, France), C.T. Caskey (Houston), K.H. Fischbeck (Philadelphia), P.S. Harper (Cardiff, England), D.E. Housman (Boston), P. de Jong (Liver- more, Calif.), B. Wieringa (Nijmegen, the Netherlands), and others. Those elements characterized to date are trinucleotide repe

Written byYu
| 1 min read

Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
1:00
Share

Robert Richards (Adelaide Children's Hospital, Australia): "This paper was the first of a series describing the finding of heritable unstable elements in human genetic disease, from our laboratory and those of J.-L. Mandel (Strasbourg, France), C.T. Caskey (Houston), K.H. Fischbeck (Philadelphia), P.S. Harper (Cardiff, England), D.E. Housman (Boston), P. de Jong (Liver- more, Calif.), B. Wieringa (Nijmegen, the Netherlands), and others. Those elements characterized to date are trinucleotide repeats: p(CCG)n for fragile X syndrome (Kremer et al., Science, 252:1711-14, 1991) and p(AGC)n for Kennedy's disease (La Spada et al., Nature, 352:77-9, 1991) and myotonic dystrophy (Brook et al., Cell, 68:799-808, 1992). "The mechanism of mutation of these sequences is novel, since mutability is proportional to their repeat copy number. Therefore, the product of a change in copy number has a different mutation frequency from its predecessor. We have termed this property of heritable unstable elements dynamic mutation— distinct from static ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

The Scientist Logo
Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!
Already a member? Login Here

Meet the Author

Published In

Share
Image of a man in a laboratory looking frustrated with his failed experiment.
February 2026

A Stubborn Gene, a Failed Experiment, and a New Path

When experiments refuse to cooperate, you try again and again. For Rafael Najmanovich, the setbacks ultimately pushed him in a new direction.

View this Issue
Human-Relevant In Vitro Models Enable Predictive Drug Discovery

Advancing Drug Discovery with Complex Human In Vitro Models

Stemcell Technologies
Redefining Immunology Through Advanced Technologies

Redefining Immunology Through Advanced Technologies

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance in AAV Manufacturing with Analytical Ultracentrifugation

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance in AAV Manufacturing with Analytical Ultracentrifugation

Beckman Coulter logo
Conceptual multicolored vector image of cancer research, depicting various biomedical approaches to cancer therapy

Maximizing Cancer Research Model Systems

bioxcell

Products

Sino Biological Logo

Sino Biological Pioneers Life Sciences Innovation with High-Quality Bioreagents on Inside Business Today with Bill and Guiliana Rancic

Sino Biological Logo

Sino Biological Expands Research Reagent Portfolio to Support Global Nipah Virus Vaccine and Diagnostic Development

Beckman Coulter

Beckman Coulter Life Sciences Partners with Automata to Accelerate AI-Ready Laboratory Automation

Refeyn logo

Refeyn named in the Sunday Times 100 Tech list of the UK’s fastest-growing technology companies