The emergence of genomics in mouse asthma models

Genomics has become a pervasive tool in biomedical research empowering basic research in models of disease as well as discovery of novel biomarkers. In the field of asthma the effort in this field has only begun recently, with a dozen experiments published up to date. The studies published so far shed light on the transcriptional networks underlying allergic inflammation, mostly on the basis of models of ovalbumin-induced acute inflammation. They also explore the specific effects on transcription of therapeutic compounds, environmental agents, genetic manipulations and different genetic backgrounds, thus providing a rich baseline description of different molecular states underlying the disease. On the contrary there has been no investigation so far of the dynamics of both initiation and manifestation of allergy, with almost all studies focusing on a single time point. Similarly, other aspects of genomics (e.g. epigenomics, chromatin interactions, microRNAs and ncRNAs) remain almost completely unexplored and are likely to benefit from the recent development of next-generation sequencing approaches.