Research article

A physical map of human Alu repeats cleavage by restriction endonucleases

Murat A Abdurashitov , Victor N Tomilov , Valery A Chernukhin and Sergey Kh Degtyarev

SibEnzyme, 2/12 Ak. Timakov Str, 630117 Novosibirsk, Russia

author email corresponding author email

BMC Genomics 2008, 9:305doi:10.1186/1471-2164-9-305

Published:	26 June 2008

Abstract

Background

Alu repetitive elements are the abundant sequences in human genome. Diversity of DNA sequences of these elements makes difficult the construction of theoretical patterns of Alu repeats cleavage by restriction endonucleases. We have proposed a method of restriction analysis of Alu repeats sequences in silico.

Results

Simple software to analyze Alu repeats database has been suggested and Alu repeats digestion patterns for several restriction enzymes' recognition sites have been constructed. Restriction maps of Alu repeats cleavage for corresponding restriction enzymes have been calculated and plotted. Theoretical data have been compared with experimental results on DNA hydrolysis with restriction enzymes, which we obtained earlier.

Conclusion

Alu repeats digestions provide the main contribution to the patterns of human chromosomal DNA cleavage. This corresponds to the experimental data on total human DNA hydrolysis with restriction enzymes.