Book description
This book provides readers with new paradigms on the mutation discovery
in the post-genome era. The completion of human and other genome
sequencing, along with other new technologies, such as mutation analysis
and microarray, has dramatically accelerated the progress in positional
cloning of genes from mutated models. In 2002, the Mouse Genome
Sequencing Consortium stated that “The availability of an annotated
mouse genome sequence now provides the most efficient tool yet in the
gene hunter's toolkit. One can move directly from genetic mapping to
identification of candidate genes, and the experimental process is
reduced to PCR amplification and sequencing of exons and other conserved
elements in the candidate interval. With this streamlined protocol, it
is anticipated that many decades-old mouse mutants will be understood
precisely at the DNA level in the near future.” The implication of such
a statement should be similar to the identification of mutated genes
from human diseases and animal models, when genome sequencing is
completed for them. More than five years have passed, but genes in many
human diseases and animal models have not yet been identified. In some
cases, the identification of the mutated genes has been a bottleneck,
because the genetic mechanism holds the key to understand the basis of
the diseases. However, an integrative strategy, which is a combination
of genetic mapping, genome resources, bioinformatics tools, and high
throughput technologies, has been developed and tested. The classic
paradigm of positional cloning has evolved with completely new concepts
of genomic cloning and protocols. This book describes new concepts of
gene discovery in the post-genome era and the use of streamlined
protocols to identify genes of interest. This book helps identify not
only large insertions/deletions but also single nucleotide mutations or
polymorphisms that regulate quantitative trait loci (QTL).
Weikuan Gu
received his PhD from Cornell University in 1994 and joined the
University of Tennessee Health Science Center as an assistant professor
in 2002. Dr. Gu's lab has developed an integrated strategy for the
positional cloning of genes, a strategy which has been successfully
applied to clone several genes from spontaneous mouse mutations.
Yongjun Wang received his MD from Hebei Medical College in 1982
and his MBA from Peking University in 2004. Dr. Wang joined Beijing
Tiantan Hospital in 2000 and now serves as the vice president of the
hospital.
