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Created by: Amy Cao
Issue 307: Uveal melanoma is a rare form of cancer. This form of melanoma develops within the eye. The molecular drivers of uveal melanoma are completely different than cutaneous melanoma; approximately 90% of uveal melanoma cases are driven by an oncogenic mutation in GNAQ or GNA11, whereas cutaneous melanoma is driven predominantly by oncogenic BRAF or NRAS mutations. In general, much less is known about uveal melanoma than about cutaneous melanoma. In this study, we developed a mathematical model of the local GNAQ/GNA11 signaling network. The model found multiple non-obvious but logical consequences of the available, limited, data. A limited number of new experiments were able to confirm model predictions and thereby illuminate multiple new aspects of uveal melanoma biology. This highlights the value of modeling for less-well characterized forms of cancer and less-well characterized biochemical networks. The illustration portrays this general concept of inferring the unknown with a visual analogy; the image shows a poorly characterized landscape where only a few areas have been well defined (the colored, solid areas) and where the missing areas of the landscape (the black and white, wire mesh-like areas) have been inferred. The bird is a MAGPIE (for Model-Assisted Generation of Predictions and Integration of Experimental data). Based on the paper: Systems modeling of oncogenic G-protein and GPCR signaling reveals unexpected differences in downstream pathway activation published in npj systems biology and applications. Concept for artwork: Michael Trogdon and Ed Stites