One of these approaches, already under way at UT Southwestern, is to identify other genes that interact with mapped genes. This will allow researchers to plot unique pathways that may shed light on the function of proteins expressed by a gene and their roles in specific diseases. Prospectors With maps in hand, the prospectors are ready to go to work, searching for insight into how disease attacks the body and how the disease can be attacked. The challenge can be daunting, even after the gene is found. Capra, professor of microbiology and internal medicine and holder of the Edwin L. Cox Distinguished Chair in Immunology and Genetics, thinks the gene resides on the sixth chromosome, and he wants to know how it works.
Timing is critical.
By the time the patient goes into insulin crisis, the disease is effectively over. But if we can understand the mechanism of the genes involved in the disease, we could develop a drug that would prevent it. Finding two critical genes has taught Dr. Eric Olson a great deal about the development of the heart. Olson, who is chairman of molecular biology and oncology, director of the Nancy B. and Jake L. Hamon Center for Basic Research in Cancer and holder of the Nancy B. and Jake L. Hamon Distinguished Chair in Basic Cancer Research, and his colleague Dr. Deepak Srivastava, assistant professor of molecular biology and oncology and of pediatrics, have identified two genes, dHAND and eHAND , involved in congenital heart defects. This is the first sign of left-right asymmetry in the embryo and establishes the orientation of the heart's left and right ventricles.