Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học Minireview cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: Rats go genomic. | Meeting report Rats go genomic Bart MG Smits and Edwin Cuppen Address Functional Genomics Group Hubrecht Laboratory Uppsalalaan 8 3584 CT Utrecht The Netherlands. Correspondence Edwin Cuppen. Email ecuppen@ Published 17 February 2006 Genome Biology 2006 7 306 doi gb-2006-7-2-306 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http 2006 7 2 306 2006 BioMed Central Ltd A report on the meeting Rat Genomics and Models Cold Spring Harbor USA 8-11 December 2005. The rat genomics research field is developing and maturing fast. Undoubtedly the mouse has played an important role in this process as the rat s big sibling from whom a lot has been learned. Indeed as witnessed by contributions to a recent meeting on rat genomics at Cold Spring Harbor technologies that have been developed for the mouse over the past decade are being rapidly transferred to the rat and the collection of bioinformatics tools and biological resources is growing fast. At the same time the rat is distinguishing itself by providing valuable unique data. A valuable model organism Over the past decades the isolation of over 200 different inbred rat strains that are unique models for complex diseases such as hypertension diabetes cancer and neurological disorders has proved the rat s value as a model for human disease. Currently more than 1 000 quantitative trait loci QTLs have been identified and as became clear during the meeting this list is still growing. Although several causal polymorphisms in QTL regions - that is polymorphisms that affect the trait in question - have been reported the minimal genomic QTL segments that are obtained often contain hundreds of genes and are thus still too large for the identification of the causal gene. Moreover the identification of causal polymorphisms in minimized QTL regions and characterization of the molecular processes underlying a given phenotype is posing a major challenge as several .
