A Fish Eye View » genomics http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview blogging about comparative physiology with some marine and regional flavor Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:58:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 How to give a mouse a heart attack http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview/2008/11/how-to-give-a-mouse-a-heart-attack/ http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview/2008/11/how-to-give-a-mouse-a-heart-attack/#comments Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:13:42 +0000 Mason Posner http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview/?p=48 Actually not easy to do.  Those little guys do not normally have elevated cholesterol levels and their arteries stay unclogged.  But with a little genetic engineering you can knockout the gene for the protein apolipoprotein E, which plays a role in clearing bad cholesterol – LDL – from the blood.  The result is high levels [...]]]> Actually not easy to do.  Those little guys do not normally have elevated cholesterol levels and their arteries stay unclogged.  But with a little genetic engineering you can knockout the gene for the protein apolipoprotein E, which plays a role in clearing bad cholesterol – LDL – from the blood.  The result is high levels of blood plasma cholesterol and the development of plaques that block coronary arteries.  Why would you want to do this to a mouse?  Well, Dr. Jonathan Smith of the Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic is using these mice as a model to identify additional genes that are involved in atherosclerosis.  He recently visited my Anatomy and Physiology class to tell us about this work.  OK, the visit was two weeks ago.  I have just been a lazy blogger.

When these mice prone to atherosclerosis are bred to other mouse strains the offspring show different susceptibilities to developing arterial plaques.  This suggests that other allelic variants (versions of genes) in these different strains influence plaque development.  Quantitative trait locus mapping can then be used to identify variations in regions of the mouse chromosome that are correlated with increased amounts of atherosclerotic lesions.  This may sound like genomic mumbo-jumbo, but it is an amazing way to relatively quickly identify putative chromosome regions that influence this disease.  Now they have to find the specific genes.

]]> http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview/2008/11/how-to-give-a-mouse-a-heart-attack/feed/ 0 What do we know about RNA and DNA? http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview/2008/11/what-do-we-know-about-rna-and-dna/ http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview/2008/11/what-do-we-know-about-rna-and-dna/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:35:26 +0000 Mason Posner http://masonposner.com/afisheyeview/?p=44 Turns out we have a lot more to find out.  This whole DNA/RNA thing was not wrapped up in the 1950s.

Two recent articles in the NY Times summarize some of the latest work on these two nucleic acids, and show that they are more impressive than we thought.  RNA interference was discovered only about 10 [...]]]> Turns out we have a lot more to find out.  This whole DNA/RNA thing was not wrapped up in the 1950s.

Two recent articles in the NY Times summarize some of the latest work on these two nucleic acids, and show that they are more impressive than we thought.  RNA interference was discovered only about 10 years ago and has already earned two people a nobel prize.  This work has opened up an entirely new world of RNA biology and promises to have large implications for basic biology and biomedicine.

After years of teaching students about junk DNA, the human genome project suggested that the large proportion of DNA that does not tell cells how to make proteins does have a function.  In addition, it is now clear that proteins attached to our DNA not only affect how our genes are activated, but that these proteins and their effects may be inheritable.  This definitely adjusts the basic dogma of DNA-RNA-protein, and what exactly constitutes our genetic material.

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