The overall goal of the Genomics and Molecular Biology Core of this Alcohol Research Center is to support studies that pursue the genes underlying alcohol seeking behavior, alcoholism, and related diseases. The Core has developed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) - based genotyping assays for the alcohol metabolizing enzymes, ADH2, ADH3, ALDH2, and CYP2E1 and has determined the allele frequencies of these loci in various collaborative studies. In addition to these assays, the Core will offer new genotyping services for the variants of ALDH1, ADH4 and ADHT. We will offer these genotyping services to investigators in order to determine if there are further relationships between these enzymes and responses to alcohol. The Core will offer a new service, microarray technology, to identify genes that are differentially expressed between high alcohol drinking and low alcohol drinking animal models under various experimental conditions. These findings will help understand the biological mechanisms of alcohol drinking by pointing to CNS neuronal pathways that are differentially changed between high and low drinking animal models as a result of chronic alcohol drinking. This technology will also be used to determine whether alcohol exposure during critical periods of development result in differential gene expression between embryos from high alcohol drinking C57BI/6 and low alcohol drinking DBA/2 mice. Microarray findings need to be confirmed with further experiments. The Core will offer Real-Time PCR as a means to verify differential expression of genes identified by microarray technology. In situ hybridization will be offered to identify cells, structures, and organs where a particular candidate gene/EST, identified by microarray technology, is expressed.
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