Tandem repeat

Not to be confused with Tandemly arrayed genes.

In genetics, tandem repeats occur in DNA when a pattern of one or more nucleotides is repeated and the repetitions are directly adjacent to each other, e.g. ATTCG ATTCG ATTCG, in which the sequence ATTCG is repeated three times.[1]

Several protein domains also form tandem repeats within their amino acid primary structure, such as armadillo repeats. However, in proteins, perfect tandem repeats are rare in naturally proteins, but they have been added to designed proteins.[2]

Tandem repeats constitute about 8% of the human genome.[3] They are implicated in more than 50 lethal human diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's disease, and several cancers.[4]

  1. ^ Tandem+Repeat at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
  2. ^ Jorda J, Xue B, Uversky VN, Kajava AV (June 2010). "Protein tandem repeats - the more perfect, the less structured". The FEBS Journal. 277 (12): 2673–82. doi:10.1111/j.1742-4658.2010.07684.x. PMC 2928880. PMID 20553501.
  3. ^ Duitama J, Zablotskaya A, Gemayel R, Jansen A, Belet S, Vermeesch JR, Verstrepen KJ, Froyen G (May 2014). "Large-scale analysis of tandem repeat variability in the human genome". Nucleic Acids Research. 42 (9): 5728–5741. doi:10.1093/nar/gku212. PMC 4027155. PMID 24682812.
  4. ^ Cui, Ya; Ye, Wenbin; Li, Jason Sheng; Li, Jingyi Jessica; Vilain, Eric; Sallam, Tamer; Li, Wei (April 2024). "A genome-wide spectrum of tandem repeat expansions in 338,963 humans". Cell. 187 (9): 2336–2341.e5. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.004. ISSN 0092-8674.