Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học quốc tế cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: Mice get their annual check-up. | Meeting report Mice get their annual check-up Virginia E Papaioannou Address Department of Genetics and Development College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University 701 W. 168th St New York NY 10032 USA. E-mail vep1@ Published 16 November 2004 Genome Biology 2004 5 358 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http 2004 5 l2 358 2004 BioMed Central Ltd A report on the 2004 meeting on Mouse Molecular Genetics Cold Spring Harbor USA 1-5 September 2004. The annual meeting on mouse molecular genetics which alternates between Cold Spring Harbor and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL in Heidelberg is the highlight of the meetings year for many mouse geneticists. It encompasses a wide spectrum of topics in mouse development and genetics and rewards participants with entertaining talks in areas they might not be following closely. The Smads have it The keynote address the Rosa Beddington Lecture in honor of our late colleague was delivered by Elizabeth Robertson University of Oxford UK . Her talk on Smad proteins the downstream effectors of transforming growth factor beta TGFP signaling set the tone for the meeting which this year had a decidedly developmental slant. Robertson reported a series of studies that used genetic manipulation to test the interrelationship of Smad proteins in regulating patterning in the early mouse embryo. Genetic studies had shown an interaction between Smad2 and Smad3 in downregulating the pathway stimulated by the growth factor Nodal indicating a functional redundancy between these two Smads. But this idea challenged the conventional wisdom based on differences in the biochemical activity of the proteins - that is until it was discovered that alternative splicing of Smad2 produces a minor transcript that is 95 identical to that for Smad3. To test experimentally whether this transcript could function like Smad3 Robertson removed an exon from the Smad2
