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David Smoller, PhD and President, Research Biotech
My favorite gene is Mastermind (mam). I cloned it as a Grad student. It’s a Drosophila gene that regulates neuron development in flies. It works with Notch in the nucleus to affect gene expression. Also Knockouts in flies causes enlarged brains with no skin in the dorsal area.
Patrick Sullivan, PhD and Vice President of Research & Development
My favorite gene is mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) because it is a nuclear receptor that regulates several important pathways is also believed to be involved in the pathophysiology of fibrotic diseases. MR is thought to drive the fibrotic response through the up-regulation of several matrices encoding genes and several growth factors. For example, agonist to MR will dramatically reduce heart hypertrophy in congestive heart failure patients.
Joseph Bedell, PhD Genetics, Manager of eStrategy Research Biotech
My favorite gene is DVL1 because I worked on it in grad school. DVL1 is named for the dishevelled gene in the fruit fly. The gene affects the orientation of hairs, thus giving a 'dishevelled' appearance in mutant flies.
Kevin Forbes, Senior R&D Scientist
My favorite gene is FIP1 (Factor Interacting with Poly(A) Polymerase 1)-characterized the Arabidopsis homologue as a grad student. A pre-mRNA 3'-end-processing factor that serves as a hub for the polyadenylation complex, by binding the pre-mRNA, interacting with other subunits, and by directly regulating the addition of the poly(A) tail through poly(A) polymerase.
Brian Buntaine, Senior Scientist
My favorite gene is Antennapedia. Misexpression of this Hox gene in D. melanogaster can cause ectopic leg and antenna formation, including legs in place of antenna on the top of the head. This was the first, and probably still the most, dramatic phenotypic expression of gene misregulation I was exposed to in grad school; can you imagine having a pair of legs growing out of your head?!
Seth Gammon, Product Manager PhD
My favorite gene is the human IgG heavy chain. It's a versatile gene that is well studied, but still not mastered. When well regulated, it fends off microbes; when misregulated, it can kill you (autoimmunity). It's a versatile tool in modern science, used in westerns, ELISA, catalytic antibodies, therapeutic antibodies, membrane protein crystallization, etc. Yet those very properties point out the limitations of our understanding and tools. Without the splice variants, hypermutation, and quaternary structure, feed forward regulation, and feed back regulation, all things that we don't understand on a broad level, antibodies would be useless.
Kristen Bettinger, Glycerol Operations Supervisor
My favorite gene is CREB1 - cAMP responsive-element binding protein 1. This gene induces transcription of a number of genes in response to hormonal stimulation of the cAMP pathway. I worked on epitoped tagged versions of this protein to demonstrate protein-protein interactions within the MAPK pathway. CREB1 is also a popular target from our MISSION® shRNA Apoptosis panel.
Daniel O’Brien, Associate Scientist—Bioinformatics
My favorite gene is sonic hedgehog homolog (Drosophila), the gene symbol is SHH and the gene id is 6469. I use this gene as a test for all my programs that manage or manipulate gene information. I never really played Sega as a kid, I was always a Nintendo boy, but since there is no “Mario and Luigi” gene, sonic wins.
Shantanu Roychowdhury, R&D Scientist Protein Expression & Proteomics
My favorite gene is VEGF. In the first lab I worked in coming out of undergrad, the focus was VEGF in Myeloid Malignancies, and targeting VEGF showed some real promise in the cell line work. In addition to the fact that bevacizumab (Avastin, Anti-VEGF) is part of frontline therapy (mFOLFOX) to gastirc and liver cancer, really showing that targeted therapy for cancer is the wave of the future, and that identification of these targets in bio-fluids is essential.
Sean Lu, PhD Principal Scientist
My Favorite Gene is the firefly luciferase gene. It's just such a perfect thing from any perspective. It does so much for its host organism: the namesake, beauty or manhood (attracting mate) and hunting (alluring prey). Imagine a firefly with his/her luciferase gene mutated/deleted/inactivated... We'd get just another ordinary no-name bug. It does still more for others: human research, a kid's glowing face (when seeing or catching a firefly), and lighting with zero GHG emission.
Efrat Barnea-Gedalyahu, Department Head, Cell Biology, R&D, Israel
My favorite gene is Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGR). The protein product of the gene is involved in cholesterol biosynthesis. HMGR is a good example of a target for drug discovery. HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitors, commonly referred to as "statins," are considered a first-line therapy for the treatment of high cholesterol.
Min Zou, Senior Bioinformatics Scientist
My favorite gene is SGK-1 (serum/glucocorticoid regulated kinase 1), because I worked on it during my post-doc. It has been shown to promote breast epithelial and cancer cell survival, and therefore it is a gene that may be involed in breast cancer initiation and development.
Jim Walters, Senior R&D Scientist, Analytical Research and Development
My favorite gene is the TP53 gene which encodes the p53 protein. p53 has been described as "the guardian of the genome" and helps regulate the cell cycle and thus functions as a tumor suppressor that can work in preventing cancer. A large portion of my graduate work focused on detecting some critical SNPs in the gene that were linked to greater risks of HPV associated cervical cancer.
Chad Brueck, Senior R&D Scientist, Technology Access Program, (TAP)
My favorite gene is DNMT3 because de novo methylases rock. Sometimes, I wish I could methylate promoters. Methylation of promoters on CpG islands leads to gene silencing which is a cool way to regulate transcription without changing a single nucleotide.
Domenic Fenoglio, Sales Development Manager, Genomics & Gene Expression
My favorite gene is IL12RB. I worked at Washington University to create an IL12RB knock-out mouse and studied how Interleukin-12 promotes cell-mediated immunity to intracellular pathogens by inducing type 1 helper T cell responses and interferon-gamma production.
David Briner, Senior R&D Scientist—Genomics
My favorite gene is callipyge. The gene, identified from sheep, affects muscle growth on their hindquarters. Callipyge is Greek for “Beautiful buttocks.”
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