KEY POINTS:
Scientists will use a million-dollar microscope, a sophisticated robotics laboratory and household yeast to search for drugs to treat a rare disease affecting New Zealand children.
Victoria University professors Paul Atkinson and David Bellows are leading a study into whether existing drugs can be used to treat congenital glycosylation disorder.
The disorder happens when the body lacks an enzyme that would let it make complex carbohydrates, and affects one in 2000 children.
It can lead to problems ranging from physical and mental retardation to seizures, and in severe cases patients die before adulthood.
Professor Atkinson said the study had been made possible because the recently acquired powerful Evotec Opera microscope could be used to look at slides of yeast.
Chemicals would be inserted in the yeast by robots in the university's year-old chemical genetics laboratory, thus achieving a level of precision not possible by hand.
Professor Atkinson said yeast, with its similar enzyme pathways to human cells, was an ideal organism for modelling human cell processes.
The Evotec Opera microscope was capable of taking more than 100,000 2MB digital snapshots a day, which meant researchers were able to process the vast and complex networks between the body's genes.
"Drug discovery has slowed down ... because scientists have discovered nearly all of the drugs that have a single-gene-targeting ability."
Scientists now had to look at the combinations of different genes that could be targeted with a combination of drugs to treat complex diseases.
"By modelling, or emulating, the disease in yeast, we will find where the enzyme acts in a normal yeast cell and where it is blocked in mutated cells. We can then screen for drugs that will correct the defect."
- NZPA
