Abstract
Genetic linkage and association studies define chromosomal regions, quantitative trait loci (QTLs), which influence the phenotype of polygenic diseases. Here, we describe a global approach to determine intergenomic consensus of those regions in order to fine map QTLs and select particularly promising candidate genes for disease susceptibility or other polygenic traits. Exemplarily, human multiple sclerosis (MS) susceptibility regions were compared for sequence similarity with mouse and rat QTLs in its animal model experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE). The number of intergenomic MS/EAE consensus genes (295) is significantly higher than expected if the animal model was unrelated to the human disease. Hence, this approach contributes to the empirical evaluation of animal models for their applicability to the study of human diseases.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Genes and Immunity |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| Pages (from-to) | 615-620 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| ISSN | 1466-4879 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 12.2004 |
Funding
We thank Michael O Glocker, Michael Kreutzer, Gertrud Fischer, Brigitte Müller-Hilke and Claudia Voigt for their support. The developers of EnsEMBL are thanked for their extraordinary efforts. This work was supported by the BMBF projects FKZ 01GG9831, 01GG9841 and NBL3 (FKZ 01ZZ0108).
