Centre for Developmental and Biomedical Genetics

许多人类疾病涉及各种细胞类型、组织和器官系统之间的相互作用，这些细胞类型、组织和器官系统不能在组织培养皿中容易地复制。发育和生物医学遗传学中心的主要目标是使用非哺乳动物物种在整个生物体背景下模拟人类疾病过程。我们的方法是基于过去二十年的发现，这些发现揭示了像热带鱼、果蝇甚至蠕虫这样简单的生物体与人类有许多共同的细胞功能和基因。通过操纵这些生物体的人类疾病相关基因，我们可以建立各种衰弱疾病的模型，并利用这些模型来发现新的治疗药物。此外，我们可以在这些简单的生物体中产生病理条件-例如动脉阻塞-并利用这些来发现相应人类病理基础的新基因。通过这些方法，我们的目标是扩大我们对一系列人类疾病的分子基础的了解，包括心血管，炎症和神经退行性疾病，为他们的病因提供新的见解，并为他们的诊断，管理和治疗提供新的线索。

Many human diseases involve interactions between various cell types, tissues and organ systems that cannot readily be reproduced in the tissue culture dish. The main goal of the Centre for Developmental and Biomedical Genetics is to use non-mammalian species to model human disease processes in a whole organism context. Our approach is based on discoveries made in the past two decades that have revealed that organisms as simple as a tropical fish, fruit fly or even a worm share many cellular functions and have many genes in common with humans. By manipulating these organisms’ versions of human disease associated genes, we can establish models for a variety of debilitating diseases and exploit these to discover new therapeutic agents. In addition, we can generate pathological conditions – such as the blockage of arteries – in these simple organisms and use these to discover novel genes that underlie the corresponding human pathology. Through these approaches we aim to expand our knowledge of the molecular basis of a range of human diseases, including cardiovascular, inflammatory and neurodegenerative, giving new insights into their causes and providing new leads for their diagnosis, management and cure.