In September, 2001, the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) convened a working group of its National Advisory Council to develop a strategic plan for Stem Cells and Developmental Biology. The working group made several recommendations, with the overall goals of providing new strategies for repairing or replacing damaged organs and generating new insights into pathologic processes underlying developmental defects and disease. There is the need for a more thorough understanding of organogenesis so that tissue degeneration and congenital malformations might be prevented and treated. The goal of GUDMAP is a fundamental description of the developing kidney and GU tract. The panel recommended that the following three objectives be combined to form the GUDMAP. a) High throughput in situ hybridization analyses to define the expression pattern of genes expressed in the developing kidney and GU tract, b) High resolution gene expression analyses to define gene expression during developmental time, the overlap in gene expression patterns, and the correlation between boundaries of gene expression and boundaries of anatomic or functional domains and c) Development of a database to house and annotate the above data and to provide rapid access of this data to the entire research community. Microarray analyses and the generation of murine strains with genetic markers are also goals of GUDMAP which serve to bolster the overall aim of defining molecular and cellular anatomy through developmental time. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
