Cardiac muscle diseases in genetically engineered mice: the evolution of molecular physiology. Chien, Kenneth R. The Department of Medicine, Center for Molecular Genetics, and the American Heart Association-Bugher Foundation Center for Molecular Biology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0613
APStracts 2:0195H, 1995.
Recent advances in molecular, cellular, and genetic-based technologies now offer the possibility of generating genetically engineered mice that display physiological phenotypes with direct relevance to human pathophysiological states. The ability to create gene ablations, gene duplications, and gene modifications should allow the use of genetic approaches to map in vivo pathways responsible for complex physiological phenotypes. Recent work from our laboratory utilizing this approach to study cardiac muscle diseases in both the adult context (cardiac hypertrophy) and in the embryonic context (congenital ventricular defects) will be discussed, as well as the steps which led to the generation and characterization of these novel mouse model systems. A large body of work from independent laboratories now points to the inception of a new field of molecular physiology that will fuse mouse genetics and in vivo physiology using appropriate miniaturized physiological technology. A summary of recent advances and prospects for future directions are discussed. 

Received 3 May 1995; accepted in final form 10 May 1995.
APS Manuscript Number H443-5.
Article publication pending Am. J. Physiol. (Heart Circ. Physiology).
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1995 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 16 May 1995.