New target regions for human hypertension via comparative genomics

Models of human disease have long been used to understand the basic pathoph ysiology of disease and to facilitate the discovery of new therapeutics. Ho wever, as long as models have been used there have been debates about the u tility of these models and their ability to mimic clinical disease at the p henotypic level. The application of generic studies to both humans and mode l systems allows for a new paradigm, whereby a novel comparative genomics s trategy combined with phenotypic correlates can be used to bridge between c linical relevance and model utility. This study presents a comparative geno mic map for "candidate hypertension loci in humans" based on translating QT Ls between rat and human, predicting 26 chromosomal regions in the human ge nome that are very likely to harbor hypertension genes. The predictive powe r appears robust, as several of these regions have also been implicated in mouse, suggesting that these regions represent primary targets for the deve lopment of SNPs for linkage disequilibrium testing in humans and/or provide a means to select specific models for additional functional studies and th e development of new therapeutics.