November 7th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Human brains have a consistent molecular architecture despite all the other genetic differences across individuals and ethnicities, according to two studies that recorded when and where genes turn on and off in multiple brain regions throughout life.
Despite individual and ethnic genetic diversity, the human prefrontal cortex shows a consistent molecular architecture, as shown in this picture. The vertical span of color-coded areas is about the same, indicating that our brains all share the same tissue at a molecular level, despite distinct DNA differences on the horizontal axis. Each dot represents a comparison between two individuals.
The research appeared in the Journal Nature and was described by the National Institutes of Health in a press release.
The first study focused on Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
March 26th, 2011 by Berci in Research
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It’s a pleasure to share the great news that we just published our review in Trends in Molecular Medicine under the title, Gene expression profiles in peripheral blood for the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases. We looked at the literature and wrote about whether peripheral blood can be used for the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases or the prediction of the effectiveness of therapies. We also came up with a decision tree and a set of proposed guides in order to facilitate inter-disciplinary collaborations.
The paper is not publicly available, but if you are interested, I’d be happy to send it to you via e-mail.
Gene expression profiling in clinical genomics has yet to deliver robust and reliable approaches for developing diagnostics and contributing to personalized medicine. Owing to technological developments and the recent accumulation of expression profiles, it is a timely and relevant question whether peripheral blood gene expression profiling can be used routinely in clinical decision making. Here, we review the available gene expression profiling data of peripheral blood in autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases and suggest that peripheral blood mononuclear cells are suitable for descriptive and comparative gene expression analyses. A gene-disease interaction network in chronic inflammatory diseases, a general protocol for future studies and a decision tree for researchers are presented to facilitate standardization and adoption of this approach.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
