DNA to Cure Diseases

[Guest guest]

Dutchen has written an article about Laboratory Professor

Churchill, Ph.D. and some of his work. I have excerpted what I found to be

the highlights of the article, but you are able to read the entire article from

the website I cited at the end. I think you will find this interesting, too.

" Our most common diseases—including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and

obesity—have been linked to many, many genes. Like complicated machines, human

bodies can break in myriad ways. What's more, our behavior has a big impact,

too. Over the past five years, Churchill has helped lead an ambitious project

called the Collaborative Cross. Its goal is to systematically breed (or " cross " )

mice to create a population that has at least as much genetic variation as all

of humanity. He expects that the Collaborative Cross team—now based in North

Carolina, Australia and Israel—will breed 30 to 50 strains by the end of 2010.

They're shooting for 500 strains within a few years. "

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This is some of what Dr. Churchill is trying to accomplish:

" Almost a decade ago, the Human Genome Project recorded the precise order of the

billions of DNA " letters, " or nucleotides, that string together to make the

complete human genome. Researchers have done the same for nearly 200 other

organisms, including mice. But even though these genomes have been “decoded,”

knowing the nucleotide sequence is only the beginning. Researchers still need to

figure out what it all means. "

http://www.jax.org/thesearch/churchill.html

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FYI,

Lottie Duthu