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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

down syndrome, pathway analysis, genetic changes

College

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

Department

Computer Science

Abstract

Many of the most serious medical problems that plague humanity are caused by problems in the genetic regulatory network. Heart disease, cancer and many other maladies could be cured if we understood how genes interact with each other in order to produce different symptoms. Many of these problems are hard to deal with because all of the 20,000 or so genes in the human genome may be responsible for part of the problem. Down Syndrome is caused by three copies of chromosome 21 and results in heart defects, decreased brain function and abnormal jaw and finger proportions. Because the problem is limited to the 200 or so genes on chromosome 21, this problem provides a simplified arena where new algorithms for understanding gene regulatory networks can be developed. Our laboratory has developed an active group of around 10 undergraduate students who have developed novel approaches to understanding the Down Syndrome regulatory network. They have identified several genes that seem to be implicated in the interacting between chromosome 21 genes and jaw development genes. Our collaborator at Purdue/Indiana University has invited students travel to his laboratory to experimentally validate the computational methods we have used through wet lab experiments. This has provided a truly unique interdisciplinary experience that energizes researchers on both sides of the collaboration.

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