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396243
Sun, 02/07/2016 - 14:25
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AGU research team announces birth of first GM animal

Manama, Feb. 7 (BNA): The Arabian Gulf University (AGU) announced the birth of the first genetically modified [Transgenic] laboratory animals developed by a team led by Professor M. Dahmani Fathallah, Dean of the College of Graduate Studies and senior staff of the department of Life Sciences and Al Jawhara Centre for Molecular Medicine and Genetic Diseases. Prof. Dahmani declared my teammates Prof. Moiz Bakhiet, Dr Noureddine Ben Khalaf and Dr, Safa Taha and myself are very excited because we succeeded in generating two types of transgenic mouse as a continuation of the discovery few years ago at Al Jawhara Centre of" ISRAA" an atypical gene [an intron embedded gene] that could link the Central Nervous System and the Immune System and control the outcome of infectious diseases and other major pathologies such as cancers. Prof. Dahmani explained, thanks to the highly advanced skills in bioinformatics analysis and genetic engineering demonstrated by the team postdoctoral fellow Dr Noureddine Ben Khalaf we have generated two types of transgenic mice; in one type we have specifically knocked out ISRAA gene [constitutive gene KO] and in the second type we have tagged ISRAA by a fluorescent protein encoding gene and introduced changes in the animal genome in a way that allows us to selectively knock out the gene in a chosen organ [Conditional KO] such as the brain or the spleen in which the connection between the nervous and the immune system was first observed. Prof Dahmani said, this is to our best knowledge the first intron embedded gene to be specifically knocked down in a living animal and we have great expectations for that it will help advancing the scientific knowledge on how intron embedded genes function in physiological and disease states and shedding more light on the genomic structural organization and phylogenetic significance on the intron embedded genes. Beyond this technological success and the potential for advancing basic scientific knowledge, we expect to learn more about how the brain communicates with the immune system and how this biological cross-talk occurs at the molecular level in addition to exploring the paths where ISRAA is showing potential in preventing and treating a number of pathological states ranging from infectious diseases to neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. Prof. Dahmani added; but the most important outcome is probably to have generated an advanced and valuable tool for biomedical research and training for few generations to go in the GCC region.

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