Texas Medical Center

About: Texas Medical Center is a healthcare organization based out in Houston, Texas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Cancer. The organization has 2845 authors who have published 2394 publications receiving 79426 citations.

GenePath: a system for automated construction of genetic networks from mutant data.

Abstract: Motivation: Genetic networks are often used in the analysis of biological phenomena. In classical genetics, they are constructed manually from experimental data on mutants. The field lacks formalism to guide such analysis, and accounting for all the data becomes complicated when large amounts of data are considered. Results: We have developed GenePath, an intelligent assistant that automates the analysis of genetic data. GenePath employs expert-defined patterns to uncover gene relations from the data, and uses these relations as constraints in the search for a plausible genetic network. GenePath formalizes genetic data analysis, facilitates the consideration of all the available data in a consistent manner, and the examination of the large number of possible consequences of planned experiments. It also provides an explanation mechanism that traces every finding to the pertinent data. Availability: GenePath can be accessed at http: //genepath.org. Contact: gadi@bcm.tmc.edu Supplementary information: Supplementary material is available at http://genepath.org/bi-supp.

Dysregulation of IGF-I signaling in uterine leiomyoma.

Abstract: IGF-I expression has been observed in human uterine leiomyomas. To examine whether autocrine IGF-I signaling plays a role in the growth of these tumors, we used an animal model of uterine leiomyoma (the Eker rat) to investigate regulation of IGF-I and the IGF-I receptor (IGF-IR) expression in tumors and normal myometrium. During the normal estrous cycle, myometrial IGF-I expression peaked on the day of proestrus when the rate of proliferation in this tissue is greatest. In leiomyomas, the expression of IGF-I was increased 7.5-fold compared with the age-matched normal tissue. The level of IGF-IR mRNA in both tumor and non-tumor tissues was found to inversely correlate with that of IGF-I. Changes observed in IGF-I signaling components correlated with the activation state of the signal-transducing protein insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1). During diestrus and proestrus when IGF-I levels were increasing, tyrosine phosphorylation of IRS-1 was increased up to 5.7-fold in the normal myometrium relative to estrus, when IGF-I levels were the lowest. Additionally, IRS-1 phosphorylation was 4-fold greater in leiomyomas relative to age-matched normal myometrium. Autocrine stimulation of the IGF-IR may, therefore, play a role in regulating the normal growth of the myometrium, and dysregulation of IGF-I signaling could contribute to the neoplastic growth of uterine leiomyomas.