“…Although the rearrangement of the ORM1 and ORM2 genes was not specifically evaluated in our population, because it was not the main objective of this study, several interesting results have been recently described. The frequencies of duplicated or triplicate genes encoding ORM1 and ORM2 proteins, together with the appearance of different gene arrangements, may distinguish some populations, in terms of their ORM diversity (Nakamura et al, 2000;Owczarek et al, 2002;Yuasa et al, 2006). For example, the duplication of ORM1 gene is frequent in Africans and Japanese (high as 10-20%) (Nakamura et al, 2000;Yuasa et al, 2006), and other studies dealing with European and Australian populations suggest that the increase in gene numbers may occur at appreciable frequencies (Dente et al, 1987;Rocha et al, 1993;Owczarek et al, 2002).…”