Mutational spectral analysis at the HPRT locus in healthy children

There is growing evidence linking somatic mutational events during fetal development and childhood to an increasing number of multifactorial human diseases. Despite this, little is known about the relationship between endogenous and environmentally induced exogenous mutations during human development. Here we describe a comparative spectral analysis of somatic mutations at the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) reporter gene locus in healthy children. We observed an age-specific decrease in the proportion of large alterations and a corresponding increase in the proportion of small alterations with increasing age following birth (P