
Melinda R. Dwinell, PhD
Professor; Associate Director, Education, Genomic Sciences and Precision Medicine Center
Locations
- Physiology
Contact Information
Education
Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California-San Diego, 1996-2001
BS, Biology/Psychology, University of Michigan, 1990
Research Experience
- Cardiovascular Physiological Phenomena
- Circulatory and Respiratory Physiological Phenomena
- Phenotype
- Respiratory Physiological Phenomena
Methodologies and Techniques
- Airway Resistance
- Monitoring, Physiologic
- Plethysmography, Whole Body
MCW Program / Core Facilities
- Rat Research Models Service Center
Research Interests
Bioinformatics | Physiological Genomics | Respiratory Physiology
My interest in collecting, analyzing and integrating large phenotype datasets began nearly ten years ago with the PhysGen Program for Genomic Applications. This program was focused on understanding the genetic basis of fundamental mechanistic pathways of the heart, lung, kidney, blood and vasculature and achieved this goal by developing two panels of consomic rat strains and ENU-induced mutant strains and physiologically characterizing these unique animal models. Comprehensive characterization of the consomic strains allows for immediate mapping of traits to a particular chromosome without the need for genetic crosses. To test the "functionality" of relevant genes found to be associated with cardiovascular and renal disease in human populations, the PhysGen Knockout program has been developing 100 knockout strains with phenotypic characterization to test the role of these genes in cardiovascular and renal disease mechanisms.
My current focus is on establishing methods to integrate large phenotypic datasets, such as the PhysGen and PhysGen Knockout phenotyping data, with genomic databases such as the Rat Genome Database. This integration will use standardized nomenclature to link the phenotypic data to the rat genomic sequence, allowing the user to query by gene ontology, phenotype ontology and disease pathway. Developing tools to provide easy access to phenotype data for a variety of strains assists in the identification of appropriate disease models and allows for comparison with human data. Integrated phenotype data sets coupled with genomic resources and emerging SNP based genotypes for hundreds of strains will improve our ability to elucidate the genetic basis of disease.
An additional area of research focus has been on the developing and characterizing rat models for pulmonary diseases, including asthma and pulmonary hypertension. Many of the animal models developed as part of the PhysGen and PhysGen Knockout programs have phenotypes that mimic pulmonary disease traits and are ideal models to further understand the genetic and environmental influence in disease development. Integration of published phenotype data for pulmonary disease traits has allowed us to identify key phenotypes that can be used to characterize strains as disease models and identify missing data sets that would further refine ideal animal models of disease.
Publications
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The Gene Ontology resource: enriching a GOld mine.
(Gene Ontology Consortium.) Nucleic Acids Res. 2021 01 08;49(D1):D325-D334 PMID: 33290552 PMCID: PMC7779012 12/09/2020
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(Fehrenbach DJ, Abais-Battad JM, Dasinger JH, Lund H, Keppel T, Zemaj J, Cherian-Shaw M, Gundry RL, Geurts AM, Dwinell MR, Mattson DL.) Hypertension. 2021 Jan;77(1):228-240 PMID: 33249861 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85097815793 12/01/2020
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(Mehrotra P, Ullah MM, Collett JA, Myers SL, Dwinell MR, Geurts AM, Basile DP.) Am J Physiol Renal Physiol. 2020 11 01;319(5):F796-F808 PMID: 32924545 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85094221372 09/15/2020
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(Prokop JW, Chhetri SB, van Veen JE, Chen X, Underwood AC, Uhl K, Dwinell MR, Geurts AM, Correa SM, Arnold AP.) Biol Sex Differ. 2020 05 12;11(1):28 PMID: 32398044 PMCID: PMC7216353 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85084627810 05/14/2020
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Chromosomal Substitution Strategies to Localize Genomic Regions Related to Complex Traits.
(Cowley AW Jr, Dwinell MR.) Compr Physiol. 2020 03 12;10(2):365-388 PMID: 32163204 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85081890516 03/13/2020
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Robust and replicable measurement for prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle response.
(Miller EA, Kastner DB, Grzybowski MN, Dwinell MR, Geurts AM, Frank LM.) Mol Psychiatry. 2020 Mar 06 PMID: 32144356 PMCID: PMC7483293 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85081733376 03/08/2020
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(Smith JR, Hayman GT, Wang SJ, Laulederkind SJF, Hoffman MJ, Kaldunski ML, Tutaj M, Thota J, Nalabolu HS, Ellanki SLR, Tutaj MA, De Pons JL, Kwitek AE, Dwinell MR, Shimoyama ME.) Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 01 08;48(D1):D731-D742 PMID: 31713623 PMCID: PMC7145519 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85077666371 11/13/2019
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Precision Medicine and Precision Public Health: Academic Education and Community Engagement.
(Meurer JR, Whittle JC, Lamb KM, Kosasih MA, Dwinell MR, Urrutia RA.) Am J Prev Med. 2019 08;57(2):286-289 PMID: 31326012 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85068737878 07/22/2019
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(Plasterer C, Tsaih SW, Lemke A, Schilling R, Dwinell M, Rau A, Auer P, Rui H, Flister MJ.) G3 (Bethesda). 2019 05 07;9(5):1739-1743 PMID: 30914425 PMCID: PMC6505137 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85065792535 03/28/2019
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Rat Genome Databases, Repositories, and Tools.
(Laulederkind SJF, Hayman GT, Wang SJ, Hoffman MJ, Smith JR, Bolton ER, De Pons J, Tutaj MA, Tutaj M, Thota J, Dwinell MR, Shimoyama M.) Methods Mol Biol. 2019;2018:71-96 PMID: 31228152 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85068143710 06/23/2019
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The Rat: A Model Used in Biomedical Research.
(Smith JR, Bolton ER, Dwinell MR.) Methods Mol Biol. 2019;2018:1-41 PMID: 31228150 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85068179700 06/23/2019
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Quantitative phenotype analysis to identify, validate and compare rat disease models.
(Zhao Y, Smith JR, Wang SJ, Dwinell MR, Shimoyama M.) Database (Oxford). 2019 01 01;2019 PMID: 30938777 PMCID: PMC6444380 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85064202973 04/03/2019