Expansion of CTG/CAG trinucleotide repeats has been shown to cause a number of autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxias (ADCA) such as SCA1, SCA2, SCA3/ MJD, SCA6, SCA7, SCA8 and DRPLA. There is a wide variation in the clinical phenotype and prevalence of these ataxias in different populations. An analysis of ataxias in 42 Indian families indicates that SCA2 is the most frequent amongst all the ADCAs we have studied. In the SCA2 families, together with an intergenerational increase in repeat size, a horizontal increase with the birth order of the offspring was also observed, indicating an important role for parental age in repeat instability. This was strengthened by the detection of a pair of dizygotic twins with expanded alleles showing the same repeat number. Haplotype analysis indicates the presence of a common founder chromosome for the expanded allele in the Indian population. Polymorphism of CAG repeats in 135 normal individuals at the SCA loci studied showed similarity to the Caucasian population but was significantly different from the Japanese population.

Expansion of CTG/CAG trinucleotide repeats has been shown to cause a number of autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxias (ADCA) such as SCA1, SCA2, SCA3/ MJD, SCA6, SCA7, SCA8 and DRPLA. There is a wide variation in the clinical phenotype and prevalence of these ataxias in different populations. An analysis of ataxias in 42 Indian families indicates that SCA2 is the most frequent amongst all the ADCAs we have studied. In the SCA2 families, together with an intergenerational increase in repeat size, a horizontal increase with the birth order of the offspring was also observed, indicating an important role for parental age in repeat instability. This was strengthened by the detection of a pair of dizygotic twins with expanded alleles showing the same repeat number. Haplotype analysis indicates the presence of a common founder chromosome for the expanded allele in the Indian population. Polymorphism of CAG repeats in 135 normal individuals at the SCA loci studied showed similarity to the Caucasian population but was significantly different from the Japanese population.

Circadian rhythms play a central role in diverse physiological phenomena and the recent years have witnessed the identification of a number of genes responsible for the maintenance of these rhythms. One of these is the Clock gene, which was first identified in mouse and subsequently in a large number of organisms, including humans. The human Clock gene has been proposed as a possible candidate for disorders affected by alterations of circadian rhythm, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. This gene contains a highly conserved polyglutamine motif, that in humans is coded for by CAG repeats. In view of the involvement of CAG repeat expansion in a number of neuro-psychiatric disorders, we have sought to determine the polymorphism status of CAG repeats at the Clock locus in humans. Our analysis of 190 unrelated individuals, who included patients suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, indicated that the repeat, which consisted of 6 CAG triplets, was not polymorphic in humans. An analysis of the repeat in non-human primates and other organisms revealed that the glutamine stretch is shortest in humans and baboons, and longest in Drosophila and zebrafish. A study of various Drosophila species revealed that the repeat number is highly polymorphic, ranging from 25 to 33 pure glutamine repeats. Unlike most other microsatellites, the CAG repeat stretch at the Clock locus in humans is smaller than its homologues in non-human primates. We propose that glutamine repeat size is functionally important in this gene and thus tightly regulated. The variation in repeat number is probably deleterious to the individual, resulting in the maintenance of a short and invariable repeat structure in the human population.

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