Current Genomics - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2001

The mouse has long been an important component of cancer research. From the realization by Little and Bagg early days of the past century demonstrating a heritable component of sponanteous cancer to the oncogenic manipulations of the germline today, the mouse has been and will continue to be the major mammalian in vivo system to study neoplasic transformation and progression. Use of the mouse has pervaded Read More

Knowing the mutational basis of a disease does not always explain the mechanism of pathogenesis, particularly when little is known about the disease-associated proteins themselves. This is very likely to be an ever-growing problem in the genomics era. The polyglutamine (polyQ) repeat disorders are an intriguing example of such a scientific dilemma. These human diseases presently include the spinocerebellar ataxia typ Read More

A search for susceptibility genes for psychiatric illness may benefit from recent advances in mouse molecular genetics. Molecular and phenotypic characterization of single gene mutations in mice with anomalies in neurophysiological or neurodevelopmental processes, disrupted in a psychiatric disease, can reveal new insights into the pathways that underlie these genetically complex illnesses. However, in the case of many psyc Read More

Impairment of hearing is the most common sensory deficit in human populations. Most cases of human deafness are hereditary. Mutations in many different genes can affect the complex process of hearing. The mouse is an excellent model for studies of these hearing disorders because the anatomy, function, and hereditary abnormalities of the ear have been shown to be similar in both humans and mice. More than 100 spo Read More

Epilepsies are defined as a group of disorders with recurrent seizures. It is now well-established from human studies that a good proportion of these epilepsies are inherited. The same finding is true for mice as there are several examples of mouse models showing monogenic and multigenic inheritance of epilepsy. This article reviews the recent developments in mouse positional cloning leading to the identification of many epi Read More