USING SYSTEMS BIOLOGY TO UNDERSTAND POLYGENIC CONTROL OF PRIMATE PUBERTY

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The specific aim of this project is to use the newly developed rhesus macaque-specific Affymetrix gene chips (MK GeneChip) to provide proof of principle for the concept that the onset of primate puberty is associated with a coordinated change in expression of a network of genes previously known for their role in tumor suppression. A few years ago we employed a human cDNA array (OFISU Gene MicroArray Shared Resource) containing a limited number of probes (8,400; 75% corresponding to known genes) to interrogate the female monkey hypothalamus at the time of puberty. Although this study resulted in the identification of a group of genes potentially involved in the control of this developmental process, it is likely that only a fraction of the relevant genes were identified due to the small number of probes in the array, and the interspecies-hybridization protocol used, which especially limited our sensitivity. Since the new Affymetrix MK GeneChip contains the entire rhesus monkey transcriptome, and includes several probes corresponding to genes whose expression is known to increase at puberty, the proposed study should be instrumental in developing the first Systems Biology approach thus far attempted to dissect the complex architecture of the gene networks involved in the neuroendocrine control of primate sexual development.