Betsy Ferguson
The Ferguson Laboratory is investigating the genetic basis of three naturally occurring diseases in macaques: age-related macular degeneration, multiple sclerosis and endometriosis. Together with collaborators in these research fields, we are identifying associated risk alleles, enabling us to establish well-characterized animal models of common diseases. Study of the mechanisms of the susceptibility genes may also suggest therapeutic approaches for the treatment of the human and non-human primate diseases.
Our lab is also developing novel genetic tools for use in the study of nonhuman primates. We use gene-targeted sequencing to identify SNP variants throughout the macaque genome. The genetic variants are used in the design of new SNP arrays for discerning animal parentage and ancestry, and as linkage markers in research studies. The sequence variants also allow us to conduct comparative population studies, elucidating the evolutionary history of macaques. These studies have led to the establishment of SNP arrays that are now used to evaluate the ancestries of macaques across all of the National Primate Research Centers, improving the breeding management and reproducibility of research in ancestry-sensitive studies.
BIOGRAPHY
Betsy Ferguson, a staff scientist in the Division of Neuroscience since 2003, became the Director of the center's Primate Genetics Program in 2008. She received a B.S. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Massachusetts in 1981 and a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Washington in 1990. As a postdoctoral fellow, she studied cell-cell signaling both in the Dept. of Developmental Biology at Stanford University and in the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Oregon. She also holds joint appointments as Associate Professor in the Molecular and Medical Genetics Dept. at OHSU, and as Research Scientist at the Washington National Primate Research Center, in Seattle Washington.
KEY PUBLICATIONS
Rhesus Macaque Genome Sequencing and Analysis Consortium. (2007) Evolutionary and biomedical insights from the rhesus macaque genome. Science 316:222-234. PMID:17431167.
Street SL, Kyes RC, Grant R and Ferguson B (2007) Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are highly conserved in rhesus (Macaca mulatta) and cynomolgus (Macaca fascicularis) macaques. BMC Genomics 8:480. PMID:18166133.
Francis PJ, Appukuttan B, Simmons E, Landauer N, Stoddard J, Hamon S, Ott J, Ferguson B, Klein M, Stout JT, and Neuringer M. (2008) Rhesus monkeys and humans share common susceptibility genes for age-related macular disease. Hum Mol Genet 17:2673-2680. PMID:18535016.
