An in Situ Study of Variant Telomeric Repeats in Human Chromosomes

Abstract

Variant telomeric repeats are selectively detected in human telomeres in situ by the novel approach of dideoxy-PRINS, displaying their organization in a format where all the individual chromosome ends can be viewed individually and simultaneously. All human chromosome ends are found to contain variant repeats, though not all types of repeats can be detected on all chromosome ends. Although the staining frequency at particular chromosome ends seems polymorphic among individuals, some chromosome ends are more commonly stained with a given probe than others. A few chromosome ends also appear with particularly strong signals. With a probe for one type of variant repeat ((AGGGTG)n), peculiar patterns with more than two signals per chromosome end are observed.