2010 - 19th Annual NC State Undergraduate Research Spring Symposium

Session Time : 4/22/10 10:30 AM - 4/22/10 11:45 AM

Content Area : Honors Teaching Students

Student Presenters :
Mandesa Malika Smith Biological Sciences and Plant Biology

Mentors and/or Co-Authors :
Janan Eppig Bioinformatics

Abstract Title : Discovering New Mouse Models for Female Reproductive Diseases

Abstract :
The mouse, Mus musculus, is genetically related to humans, making it a good model system for studying human diseases. Like humans, some mice naturally develop diseases such as cancer or cystic fibrosis. What makes a mouse model a good model? Some mice designated as models in published literature do not express the key phenotypes of the corresponding human disease. To answer this question published models of female reproductive diseases from the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) Database were examined. A set of rules to identify a good mouse model was determined, and these rules were applied to identify possible models for human female reproductive diseases. Resources such as MGI and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) were utilized to compare the phenotypes and genotypes of human diseases and the corresponding mouse models. We determined that a good mouse model displays one matching phenotype in cases where the human disease has few phenotypes and requires 40% matching phenotypes in cases where the human disease has many key phenotypes. Based on this criterion for models of human reproductive diseases, some models need re-evaluating and others, not yet explicitly identified, may prove to be models based on concordant phenotypes.