More than 14 million people in the United States suffer from asthma and other chronic respiratory ailments. The number of victims has doubled over the last 15 years and is still on the rise, with children living in urban areas particularly susceptible. Medical researchers have no explanation for this upsurge but it is approaching epidemic stature.
In a major breakthrough, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have announced the discovery of two genes that contribute to the development of asthma. The finding suggests that decreasing the activity of these two genes could help reduce susceptibility to asthma attacks.
A team led by Dr. Edward Rubin and Derek Symula of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, and including scientists from the Arial, Helveticaity of California, San Francisco campus, worked with transgenic mice (mice that carry human genes) and found that even subtle changes in the activity of the interleukin genes IL4 and IL13 can have an important effect on asthma susceptibility. Their research results were reported in the October 1 issue of the journal Nature Genetics.
Rubin’s group has previously developed mouse models from a variety of human conditions including Down syndrome, sickle cell disease, and atherosclerosis.
In addition to his research group at Berkeley Lab, Rubin also leads the functional genomics program at DOE’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a collaborative effort between Berkeley Lab and the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories as part of DOE’s contribution to the Human Genome Project. Rubin credits his affiliation with JGI as a factor in the success of the asthma research.
"Our asthma research is a prime example of biology made possible by the Human Genome Project," he says. "It was our proximity to the actual group engaged in the genome mapping effort at JGI that led us into this investigation."
Because asthma is a complex genetic condition in which several genes, working in concert, ultimately determine an individual’s susceptibility, it posed a major challenge to the traditional approach to genetic research which was used to identify single genes responsible for disorders such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease.
Says Rubin, "The approach we used to pursue asthma genes may now be applied to other common complex genetic conditions, for instance hypertension and obesity, where large genomic regions have been implicated as containing genes contributing to a particular disease."
The project was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Institutes of Health.
Contact: David Gilbert, degilbert@lbl.gov
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