Comparisons of Properties of Tandem Repeats Associated with Beteen Diabetes Genes and Non-Diabetes Disease Genes

Tandem repeats (TRs) are associated with disease genes, play an important role in evolution and are important in genomic organization and function. Much research has been done on descriptions of properties of tandem repeats, such as copy-number, period, etc, and correlation between mutations within tandem repeats and disease. This project aims to detect some differences which may exist within the features of different tandem repeats as-associated with disease in human whole-genome. The features of tandem repeats associated with diabetes genes were compared to the counterparts of non- diabetes disease genes by comparisons of chromosome properties; chromosome 12 was detected as a representative of all human 24 chromosomes. A database, TRbase, to study the associations between disease genes and previously uncharacterized tandem repeats was ex-tended to whole human genomes. It was found that the percentage match and indels (insets and deletions) of TRs of diabetes genes were significantly different to the non-diabetes disease genes.