Progress on the mechanistic research of the trinucleotide repeat instabilities underlying human neurodegenerative diseases.

Abstract

The expansion and deletion instabilities shown by some trinucleotide repeated DNA sequences are associated with more than 50 neurodegenerative diseases in humans. The increase or decrease of the trinucleotide repeat units underlying the diseases are not yet clearly explained using any mechanism, but has been found to affect the expression of specific genes, or produces cytotoxic RNA and protein, which has now become a common pathological mechanism of the diseases. The ongoing studies have shown that the changes in the copy numbers of the disease-related trinucleotide repeats may result from abnormal DNA replication, repair, recombination, and gene transcription. Human genetical studies also suggest that abnormal DNA replication, repair, recombination, or gene transcription that occurred in the disease-related trinucleotide repeat DNA sites may play a key role in the trinucleotide repeat DNA instabilities. Based on the research experiences of our research group, this paper reviews the recent research progress on the mechanisms of the disease-associated trinucleotide repeat DNA instabilities including their base mutation instabilities, the amplification and deletion instabilities of the repeat units, to better understand the molecular mechanism of the disease-associated trinucleotide repeats instabilities.