[The role of molecular genetics in diagnosis of hereditary motor-sensory neuropathy].

: Hereditary motor-sensory neuropathies (HMSN) are a heterogeneous group of disorders of peripheral nervous system. Four genes in HMSN have been characterized so far i.e.: PMP22, MPZ, Cx32 and EGR-2. The advent of molecular genetic techniques over the past few years has provided identification of molecular defects in a few forms of HMSN. The present study describes the application of modern molecular genetic methods, which are used in the studies of HMSN. Southern blot hybridisation, Fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH), Short Tandem Repeat analysis (STR), Semiquantitative PCR analysis (SQ-PCR), Single Strand Conformation Polymorphism method (SSCP), Heteroduplex analysis (HD) and finally DNA automated sequencing are described in the present paper. In the conclusions the advantages and limits of mentioned methods of DNA analysis in HMSN have been described.