Carolina Cardiopulmonary Gene Expression Services

描述(由申请人提供)： 随着时间的推移，细胞表型的主要决定因素是表达的基因模式。在过去的二十年里，为了解释心肺疾病的细胞生物学、遗传学和病理生理学，人们对基因的表达进行了逐个基因的分析。最近，新技术的出现--特别是DNA微阵列--使科学家能够将他们的重点从单一基因转移到可以用计算方法分析的基因表达模式上。在过去的2-3年里，这些技术进步极具启发性，特别是在肿瘤生物学领域。尽管这些技术在心肺科学中有更多的应用，但技术和资金障碍限制了NHLBI资助的研究人员应用这些方法的能力。这些障碍在北卡罗来纳大学尤为严重，在那里，由NHLBI资助的研究人员在将DNA微阵列应用于他们正在研究的科学和医学问题上的资源有限。在这项申请中，我们建议建立卡罗莱纳州心肺基因表达服务，以满足北卡罗来纳州大学心血管生物学中心、囊性纤维化中心以及血栓和止血中心NHLBI资助的研究人员的微阵列需求。这些中心包括NHLBI的主要任务区。我们建议利用北卡罗来纳大学莱恩伯格综合癌症中心组装的微阵列技术方面的专业知识，并将同样的技术应用于NHLBI感兴趣的领域。已经成立了一个内部操作委员会，以监督这一服务的建立和实施，以确定如何分配与NHLBI资助的调查人员的联系，并确保实验设计、质量控制和生物信息学分析的问题是严格的。该委员会还将负责通过监测其他实验室的技术进步以及支持当地科学家的技术进步，确定NHLBI赞助的基因表达服务仍然是最先进的。本提案有四个目标：目标1：为北卡罗来纳大学NHLBI资助的研究人员扩大微阵列服务的资本；目标2：扩大北卡罗来纳大学微阵列服务的技术；目标3：为北卡罗来纳大学NHLBI资助的微阵列用户提供生物信息学服务；以及目标4：微阵列在心肺生物学中的应用。这些目标将支持我们的总体目标，即为北卡罗来纳大学由NHLBI资助的研究人员提供全面的微阵列服务，以补充他们现有的研究计划；我们预计，我们服务的统一性质将允许科学和技术进步，使更大的心肺社区受益。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over time, the primary determinant of cellular phenotypes is the pattern of genes that are expressed. For the past two decades, gene expression has been analyzed on a gene-by-gene basis in order to explain the cell biology, heredity, and pathophysiology of cardiopulmonary diseases. More recently, the advent of new technologies - especially DNA microarrays - has allowed scientists to shift their focus from single genes to patterns of gene expression that can be analyzed using computation methods. These technologic advances have been enormously instructive over the past 2-3 years, particularly in the field of tumor biology. Although there are, if anything, even more applications for these technologies in the cardiopulmonary sciences, technological and financial barriers have limited the ability of NHLBI-funded investigators to apply these methods. These barriers are particularly acute at UNC, where the NHLBI-funded investigators have limited resources to apply DNA microarrays to the scientific and medical problems they are studying. In this application, we propose to establish the Carolina Cardiopulmonary Gene Expression Services to serve the microarray needs of NHLBI-funded investigators at UNC in the Carolina Cardiovascular Biology Center, the Cystic Fibrosis Center, and the Center for Thrombosis and Hemostasis. These centers encompass the major mission areas of NHLBI. We propose to take advantage of the expertise in microarray technology that has been assembled by the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC, and apply this same technology to areas of interest to NHLBI. An Internal Operations Committee has been assembled to oversee the establishment and implementation of this service, to determine how access to NHLBI-funded investigators is allocated, and to ensure that issues of experimental design, quality control, and bioinformatic analysis are rigorous. This committee will also be charged to determine that the NHLBI-sponsored gene expression services remain state-of-the-art, by monitoring advances in technologies by other laboratories as well as by supporting technological advances by local scientists. The present proposal has four aims: Aim #1: Capital expansion of microarray services for UNC NHLBI-funded investigators; Aim #2: Technology expansion of UNC microarray services; Aim #3: Bioinformatics services for UNC NHLBI-funded microarray users; and Aim #4: Microarray applications in cardiopulmonary biology. These aims will support our overall goal to provide NHLBI-funded investigators at UNC with comprehensive microarray services that complement their existing research programs; we anticipate that the unified nature of our services will permit scientific and technological advances that will benefit the larger cardiopulmonary community.