Modeling Human Disease

The astonishing recent advances in the technology for determining DNA sequences have made personalized genomics a foreseeable reality for the doctor's office. This technology has started a whole new gold rush for human disease gene discovery and produced an onslaught of information that represents a new challenge in personalized medicine: connecting genotype to phenotype. Experimental organisms such as yeast, worms, fruit flies, zebrafish, and mice have long been critical for discovering the molecular mechanisms fundamental to life, thereby providing a shortcut to understanding human biology. The new developments allow these model organisms to also provide key insights into the association of specific genes with human disease.