Comments,
story ideas
Click here to
e-mail the Record
|
|
|
Comments,
story ideas Click here to e-mail the Record |
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
Mouse genome blueprint published
By Darrell E. Ward University researchers, working with a large team of international investigators, have published a draft sequence of the mouse genome -- the genetic blueprint of a mouse -- and an analysis comparing the mouse and human genomes. The study appears in the Dec. 5 issue of the journal Nature. The achievement is a landmark advance for the Human Genome Project. It is the first time that scientists have compared the contents of the human genome with that of another mammal. This milestone is especially significant because the mouse is the most important animal model in biomedical research. "The mouse genome sequence will give us a detailed molecular understanding of this important experimental animal," said lead author Robert H. Waterston, M.D., Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Professor of Genetics and director of the Genome Sequencing Center. "This in turn should lead to a new understanding of human disease and effective new therapies." John D. McPherson, Ph.D., associate professor of genetics and leader of the University's mouse sequencing team, compared the mouse sequence to the Rosetta Stone. "Although we have the human genome sequence in hand, we don't have the ability to read it all," he said. "Now we can compare the mouse to human, enabling us to identify important areas of the human genome." The investigators found that the two genomes had fewer differences than expected. The mouse genome is about 14 percent smaller than the human genome, but the number of genes and the types of genes are similar. "One might expect to find one group of genes that makes a mammal a mammal, another group that makes us human and third group that makes a mouse," said McPherson. "But that's not the case. We have most genes in common." The study also found that the mouse genome is specialized in the areas of smell, reproduction and immunity. Comparison of the two genomes further revealed important regions in the human genome because they have been conserved through the 75 million years of evolution that separates humans and mice. Michael R. Brent, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science, led one of the teams analyzing the mouse sequence. Brent's team developed methods for comparing the mouse and human genomes that improved the identification of genes in both species. The location of human genes is generally determined by their similarity to known genes. But Brent's team used statistical pattern recognition methods and genome sequence information only to identify more than 1,000 previously unknown genes that mice and humans share. "Working with the mouse genome, we've developed techniques needed to help identify the remaining unknown genes in the human genome," Brent said. "As more mammalian genomes are sequenced, we can use these techniques to analyze that data to help complete the catalogue of human genes." The mouse genome sequence shows the order of the DNA chemical bases -- often represented by the letters A, T, C and G -- along the 20 chromosomes of a female mouse. The draft sequence was assembled by the Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium, an international team of scientists at Washington University, the Whitehead Institute, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute in England. International scientists from 27 institutions also helped analyze the sequence information. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
