Tandemly repeated DNA families in the mouse genome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Functional and morphological studies of tandem DNA repeats, that combine high portion of most genomes, are mostly limited due to the incomplete characterization of these genome elements. We report here a genome wide analysis of the large tandem repeats (TR) found in the mouse genome assemblies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using a bioinformatics approach, we identified large TR with array size more than 3 kb in two mouse whole genome shotgun (WGS) assemblies. Large TR were classified based on sequence similarity, chromosome position, monomer length, array variability, and GC content; we identified four superfamilies, eight families, and 62 subfamilies - including 60 not previously described. 1) The superfamily of centromeric minor satellite is only found in the unassembled part of the reference genome. 2) The pericentromeric major satellite is the most abundant superfamily and reveals high order repeat structure. 3) Transposable elements related superfamily contains two families. 4) The superfamily of heterogeneous tandem repeats includes four families. One family is found only in the WGS, while two families represent tandem repeats with either single or multi locus location. Despite multi locus location, TRPC-21A-MM is placed into a separated family due to its abundance, strictly pericentromeric location, and resemblance to big human satellites.</p> <p>To confirm our data, we next performed <it>in situ </it>hybridization with three repeats from distinct families. TRPC-21A-MM probe hybridized to chromosomes 3 and 17, multi locus TR-22A-MM probe hybridized to ten chromosomes, and single locus TR-54B-MM probe hybridized with the long loops that emerge from chromosome ends. In addition to <it>in silico </it>predicted several extra-chromosomes were positive for TR by <it>in situ </it>analysis, potentially indicating inaccurate genome assembly of the heterochromatic genome regions.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Chromosome-specific TR had been predicted for mouse but no reliable cytogenetic probes were available before. We report new analysis that identified <it>in silico </it>and confirmed <it>in situ </it>3/17 chromosome-specific probe TRPC-21-MM. Thus, the new classification had proven to be useful tool for continuation of genome study, while annotated TR can be the valuable source of cytogenetic probes for chromosome recognition.</p

Bulletin: Number 438: What is Meant by "Quality" in Milk

20 pages, 1 article*What is Meant by "Quality" in Milk* (Breed, R. S.; Harding, H. A.; Stocking, W. A. Jr.; Hastings, E. G.) 17 page

Cultural Studies and the Culture Concept

My purpose in this paper is to complicate the genealogies of the concept of culture as a way of life that have held sway within cultural studies. I do so by reviewing key aspects in the development of this concept within the ‘Americanist’ tradition of anthropology pioneered by Franz Boas in the opening decades of the twentieth century and continued by a generation of Boas’s students including Ruth Benedict, Alfred Kroeber and Margaret Mead. I focus on three issues: the respects in which the ‘culture concept’ was shaped by aesthetic conceptions of form; its spatial registers; and its functioning as a new surface of government, partially displacing that of race, in the development of American multicultural policies in the 1920s and 1930s. In relating these concerns to Graeme Turner’s enduring interest in the processes through which culture is ‘made national’, I indicate how the spatial registers of the culture concept anticipate contemporary approaches to these questions. I also outline what Australian cultural studies has to learn from the American evolution of the culture concept in view of the respects in which the latter was shaped by the racial dynamics of a ‘settler’ society during a period of heightened immigration from new sources. In concluding, I review the broader implications of the fusion of aesthetic and anthropological forms of expertise that informed the development of the culture concept

The great school milk conspiracies of the 1980s

Sealed-bidding, collusion, antitrust, game theory,