A novel approach to investigate tissue-specific trinucleotide repeat instability

In Huntingtons disease (HD), an expanded CAG repeat produces characteristic striatal neurodegeneration. Interestingly, the HD CAG repeat, whose length determines age at onset, undergoes tissue-specific somatic instability, predominant in the striatum, suggesting that tissue-specific CAG length changes could modify the disease process. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms underlying the tissue specificity of somatic instability may provide novel routes to therapies. However progress in this area has been hampered by the lack of sensitive high-throughput instability quantification methods and global approaches to identify the underlying factors.

12

Lee JM, Zhang J, Su AI, Walker JR, Wiltshire T, Kang K, Dragileva E, Gillis T, Lopez ET, Boily MJ, Cyr M, Kohane I, Gusella JF, MacDonald ME, Wheeler VC