Although the T. cruzi genome may be regarded as unusually repetitive, repeated DNA is present in all genomes, with repeat unit lengths ranging from a single nucleotide to several mega bases.
Repetitive elements (repeats) include tandem repeats and interspersed repeats (DNA transposons and retrotransposons).
Instead, the chromosomal ends of Alliaceae species consist of highly repetitive satellite repeats, which structurally resemble the subtelomeric repeats found in other plant species.
Alleles of intermediate size, in family 5, have revealed multiple repetitive ATGCT repeats in the most proximal part of the expansion and ATTCTAT septanucleotide repeats in its distal part, whereas larger alleles, in family 4, have showed two different septarepeat interruptions ATTTTCT and ATATTCT [12].
In this study, we designed primer/probe sets targeting repetitive Alu repeats or Alu-equivalent sequences in the human, Chinese hamster and murine genomes.
Moreover, the repetitive PTS repeats are sparsely represented in cDNA libraries.
Short (<100 bp) regions of elevated copy number frequently correspond to highly repetitive tandem repeats and/or homopolymer tracks.
Repeat analysis using the program REPuter [ 16] does not indicate that these genetic regions are highly repetitive, although repeats are detectable on the plasmid.
Interestingly, this genome was shown to be highly repetitive, with repeats and TEs comprising about two-thirds of its ~160 Mb-long sequence.
Synthetic ODNs containing repetitive telomeric repeats (TTAGGGn) were capable of blocking CpG-DNA induced activation in vitro [ 86] and, most importantly, reduced morbidity and mortality when administered to lupus prone NZB/NZW mice [ 125].
