Integrated Phenotyping, Genomic, and Proteomic Approaches to Assign Function to Genes Associated with Metabolic Disease

Both the genetics- and genomics-based approaches are currently delivering a large number of candidate loci and genes involved in development and progression of various human diseases.  Validation of these candidate genes has generally been through the development of custom animal models but recent advances in the precision and speed genomics technology (such as homologous recombination, CRISPR etc.) has seen an increase in the number of models being generated.  Combined with the help of international consortiums targeted deletions in the germ line of mouse ES cells has been developed for over 20K known or predicted genes in mice and inroads have been made into broad-based phenotyping.  Important in this effort is the generation of platforms for analysis of expression, genomic and proteomic approaches to understand the molecular basis of diseases.  Such efforts will also eventually enable the development of evidence-based intervention and prevention of disease and its serious complications. In this presentation the se of these tools will be briefly discussed for models of obesity, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia.