DISCOVERY AND TESTING OF NOVEL IMMUNOLOGICAL GENES

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. A method of predicting unknown gene function has been developed and tested on a limited set of genes. The method entails a global analysis of microarray datasets, across all platforms and for all genes. Approximately 38% of human genes have no known function, yet approximately 800 of these genes have enough co-expression data and clear patterns of co-expression with one or more known partners to predict function. Many of these unknown genes are "hub" genes, or genes that respond with many others and a strong bias towards immune-related functions was discovered. We have narrowed this list to the 40 with the most data to support functional predictions. We propose to test each of these genes for their putative involvement in both the cell cycle and the immune system using siRNA knockdowns and in vitro assays.