Strategic Research Centre for Genetics of Metabolic Regulation
- Reference number
- A3 05:185
- Start and end dates
- 060101-121231
- Amount granted
- 45 000 000 SEK
- Administrative organization
- Uppsala University
- Research area
- Life Sciences
Summary
A grand challenge in biology and medicine in the coming years is to understand the functional role of all coding as well as non-coding DNA sequences. The main focus of the centre is to use functional genetics and comparative genomics to resolve the genetics of metabolic, inflammatory and malignant syndromes. This is an important endeavour since these disorders constitute major health problems in society. In addition, metabolic regulation is an important topic in animal breeding, plant breeding and in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. The access to complete genome sequences and advanced genomic tools creates a unique period in the history of biology when genotype-phenotype relationships can be studied in depth. The mission of the centre is to advance the basic understanding of disease mechanisms through the genetic dissection of multifactorial traits and disorders. The aim is to identify and characterize disease pathways in order to find new ways to prevent and treat disease. The centre includes several technological approaches and resources including biobanks, bioinformatics, statistical genetics, high-throughput genetic analysis, expression analysis and cell biology. It is located at the Uppsala Biomedical Centre with nodes at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University. VB för 2006 (lätt redigerar): The main focus of the centre is to use functional genetics and comparative genomics to resolve the genetics of metabolic, inflammatory and malignant syndromes. Access to complete genome sequences and advanced genomic tools creates a unique period in the history of biology when genotype-phenotype relationships can be studied in depth. To accomplish this we are using both domestic animals and model organisms for genetic analysis of a broad range of phenotypic traits of medical significance. During the first year of operation several important achievements have been made: - we have or are in the process to establish large intercrosses in chicken representing three unique models for autoimmune disorders in humans - we have shown that epistatic interaction between genes has an important role for explaining phenotypic differences between two lines of chicken divergently selected for growth - we have used genome-wide association analysis in the dog to map and identify a gene associated with pigmentation disorder and hearing loss and another gene causing hair ridge and dermoid sinus in ridgeback dogs, the latter is a model for neural tube defects in humans.