Leung Lab Blog

Medical Research

*These two articles point out the problems of using animal models for research if the goal is to extract translational values and how mouse model, the gold standard for disease research, can actually be a poor reference standard because of the ways we want to standardize the biological tool for testing.

1. Lynch VJ. Use with caution: developmental systems divergence and potential pitfalls of animal models. Yale J Biol Med. 2009 Jun;82(2):53-66. Review. PubMed PMID: 19562005; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2701150.
2. Martin B, Ji S, Maudsley S, Mattson MP. “Control” laboratory rodents are metabolically morbid: why it matters. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Apr 6;107(14):6127-33. Epub 2010 Mar 1. PubMed PMID: 20194732; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2852022.

Genomics

1. Tariq MA, Kim HJ, Jejelowo O, Pourmand N. Whole-transcriptome RNAseq analysis from minute amount of total RNA. Nucleic Acids Res. 2011 Oct 1;39(18):e120. Epub 2011 Jul 6. PubMed PMID: 21737426; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3185437.
2. Compeau PE, Pevzner PA, Tesler G. How to apply de Bruijn graphs to genome assembly. Nat Biotechnol. 2011 Nov 8;29(11):987-91. doi: 10.1038/nbt.2023. PubMed PMID: 22068540.
3. Ala-Korpela M, Kangas AJ, Inouye M. Genome-wide association studies and systems biology: together at last. Trends Genet. 2011 Oct 20. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 22018481.

Regeneration

1. Kroehne V, Freudenreich D, Hans S, Kaslin J, Brand M. Regeneration of the adult zebrafish brain from neurogenic radial glia-type progenitors. Development.  2011 Nov;138(22):4831-41. Epub 2011 Oct 17. PubMed PMID: 22007133.

Disease/Evolution

1. Cusack BP, Arndt PF, Duret L, Roest Crollius H. Preventing dangerous nonsense: selection for robustness to transcriptional error in human genes. PLoS Genet. 2011 Oct;7(10):e1002276. Epub 2011 Oct 13. PubMed PMID: 22022272; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3192821.
• Commentary: Wilke CO. Transcriptional robustness complements nonsense-mediated decay in humans. PLoS Genet. 2011 Oct;7(10):e1002296. Epub 2011 Oct 13. PubMed PMID:22022274; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3192817.
2. Shelly T, McInnis D. Road test for genetically modified mosquitoes. Nat Biotechnol. 2011 Nov 8;29(11):984-5. doi: 10.1038/nbt.2025. PubMed PMID: 22068534.

Eye Disease

1. Johnson LV, Forest DL, Banna CD, Radeke CM, Maloney MA, Hu J, Spencer CN, Walker AM, Tsie MS, Bok D, Radeke MJ, Anderson DH. Cell culture model that mimics drusen formation and triggers complement activation associated with age-related macular degeneration. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Nov 8;108(45):18277-82. Epub 2011 Oct 3. PubMed PMID: 21969589.
2. Jiang L, Zhang H, Dizhoor AM, Boye SE, Hauswirth WW, Frederick JM, Baehr W. Long-term RNA interference gene therapy in a dominant retinitis pigmentosa mouse model. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Nov 8;108(45):18476-81. Epub 2011 Oct 31. PubMed PMID: 22042849.

Evolution

1. Liu R, Ochman H. Stepwise formation of the bacterial flagellar system. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Apr 24;104(17):7116-21. Epub 2007 Apr 16. Erratum in: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jul 3;104(27):11507. PubMed PMID: 17438286; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1852327.

Systems biology

1. Navlakha S, Bar-Joseph Z. Algorithms in nature: the convergence of systems biology and computational thinking. Mol Syst Biol. 2011 Nov 8;7:546. doi: 10.1038/msb.2011.78. PubMed PMID: 22068329.
2. Ala-Korpela M, Kangas AJ, Inouye M. Genome-wide association studies and systems biology: together at last. Trends Genet. 2011 Oct 20. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 22018481.
3. Cheong R, Rhee A, Wang CJ, Nemenman I, Levchenko A. Information transduction capacity of noisy biochemical signaling networks. Science. 2011 Oct 21;334(6054):354-8. Epub 2011 Sep 15. PubMed PMID: 21921160.

Biotech business

1. Francisco M. Third-quarter biotech job picture. Nat Biotechnol. 2011 Nov 8;29(11):1052. doi: 10.1038/nbt.2037. PubMed PMID: 22068542.