News Release

$14 Million NIH grant launches heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders center at the Jackson Laboratory

Grant and Award Announcement

Jackson Laboratory

Bar Harbor, Maine: Cracking the genetic codes controlling the vital physical functions of breathing, circulation, blood formation and sleep is now on the horizon. Taking advantage of new technologies and the similarity between the human and mouse genomes, the National Institutes of Health has made a four-year, $14 million grant to The Jackson Laboratory to establish a center for mouse models of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders.

The center has two key goals: (1) developing new models and databases for biomedical researchers worldwide, and (2) advancing understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying healthy function and diseases of the heart, lungs and blood, as well as the physiology of sleep. Dr. Luanne L. Peters, a Jackson Laboratory staff scientist, is the new center’s program director. "Mice and humans share a remarkably similar genome, and get many of the same diseases, including atherosclerosis, hyperactive airways, and high blood pressure," Dr. Peters explains. "At The Jackson Laboratory, our knowledge of the mouse genome makes it possible for us to analyze complex human diseases, using powerful new genetic and molecular techniques to identify genes and track their interactions."

In the past, finding new mouse models of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders has been difficult because many of these conditions—hypertension, for example—do not present an overt phenotype (i.e., show visible characteristics).

Also, though the human genome has been sequenced and the mouse genome is close to completion, a great deal still needs to be learned about how individual genes work and how multiple genes interact to cause complex diseases such as atherosclerosis and thrombosis. "It’s estimated that humans and mice have up to 100,000 genes," Dr. Peters says, "but we know the function of fewer than 10% of them."

The Jackson Laboratory program is designed to address both problems using a "phenotype-driven" approach. "We’ll start out by studying some of our most widely used inbred mouse strains, looking for differences in heart, lung, blood and sleep function," Dr. Peters says, describing the strain characterization component of the center. "Identifying those differences will be critical in understanding the genetic interactions that produce complex human diseases." The next step is studying individuals in which a single gene has been altered. "By determining the phenotype we will learn a great deal about what that single gene does. So we will have added knowledge about gene function and created a potentially valuable new model."

The new models and all the data produced will be available to the biomedical research community. Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health made a $16.3 million grant to The Jackson Laboratory to start a center for models of neurological diseases. Both grants—the two largest in the Laboratory’s history—will provide new tools to genetic researchers around the world as well as those here in Bar Harbor.

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Besides Peters, whose own research interests focus on blood formation and bleeding disorders, many other Jackson Laboratory principal investigators will also participate in the grant project, as will researchers at Boston University, the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University. This diversity reflects the wide range of biomedical issues the grant is to address: Heart: atherosclerosis, plasma lipids, blood pressure, heart rate (Drs. Beverly Paigen, Gary Churchill, and Juergen Naggert, The Jackson Laboratory; Dr. Haralambos Gavras, Boston University).

Lung: respiratory rate, tidal volume, CO2 production, oximetry, methacholine reactivity (Dr. David Schwartz, Duke University).
Blood: anemia, platelet defects, coagulopathies, thrombosis (Drs. Luanne Peters and Jane Barker, The Jackson Laboratory).
Sleep: rest/activity patterns, sleep/wake patterns, response to sleep deprivation, biological clocks, NREM vs. REM sleep, craniofacial dysmorphology (Dr. Allan Pack, University of Pennsylvania; Dr. Kevin Seburn, The Jackson Laboratory).
Obesity: body composition (basal and diet-induced), ingestive behavior, energy expenditure, plasma LDL and HDL-C, triglycerides, glucose, leptin, and insulin levels (Dr. Juergen Naggert, The Jackson Laboratory).
Inflammation: response to inflammatory stimuli, sensitivity to apoptosis (Dr. Alexander Chervonsky, The Jackson Laboratory).
Development: detection and screening "missing classes" of progeny (Dr. Timothy O’Brien, The Jackson Laboratory).
The grant will also fund new bioinformatics programs, headed by Jackson Laboratory Associate Staff Scientist Dr. Carol Bult. A visiting investigator program, and scientific courses and conferences at The Jackson Laboratory will be directed by Dr. John Macauley of the Laboratory.

The Jackson Laboratory, founded in 1929, is a world leader in mammalian genetics research. With more than 1,000 employees, the nonprofit, independent facility has a mission to improve the quality of human life through discoveries arising from its own genetic research and by enabling the research and education of others.


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