Scientists at The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been working on a project that may help them understand how genes interact with each other.
According to Chris Cox, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, the work was published in the multidisciplinary science journal Nature.
The long term goal of the work is to “develop new methods of figuring out the mechanistic details of how genes operate,” Cox said. By analyzing the variations of protein levels, scientists may be able to make inferences about the mechanisms by which genes interact.
According to Cox, part of the process involved programming genes that would glow from green fluorescent proteins when activated. From this, experimental data was gathered by measuring the variation of the protein around a target level. These variations, or genetic noise, would help show how the genes interact. Changing the environment of the cell through such things as varying the temperature or the way the gene is regulated cause “predictable changes in noise of that protein,” Cox said.
The project has been in the idea stage for five years and finally began three and a half years ago.
It began with a proposal for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and later the National Science Foundation.
DARPA was interested in obtaining a better understanding of genetic regulatory systems for possible uses with controlling circadian rhythms of soldiers on the battlefield, healing wounds and helping find early cell markers for diseases, Cox said.
Because Nature publishes articles from all scientific disciplines, Cox said he hopes the work will help out other researchers as well.
“A lot of mathematics and computer modeling goes into interpreting the data,” Cox said. “Engineers can make a good contribution to biology.”
Mike McCollum, graduate student in electrical and mechanical engineering, was one of the many students involved with the modeling and simulation side of the project.
“There is a lot of information in that noise,” said McCollum, who indicated the project may lead to new pharmaceuticals and treatments.
The next step is to “refine the way we do it and make an easier-to-use method,” McCollum said.
Roy Dar, a graduate student, was an intern whose main roles included doing experiments, processing data and analysis. “The basic idea is a new approach to biology and understanding how function evolved in a quantitative way,” Dar said.
Hopefully the researches “will pull in collaborations” and create a “strong recruitment of potential future scientists,” Dar said.
