Whois & Analysis for jax.org

The Jackson Laboratory (often abbreviated as JAX) is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution dedicated to contributing to a future of better health care based on the unique genetic makeup of each individual.

With more than 1,800 employees in Bar Harbor, Maine; Sacramento, California; and at a new genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Connecticut; the Laboratory's mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.

The institution is a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center and has NIH centers of excellence in aging and systems genetics.

Health is the level of functional and metabolic efficiency of a living organism.

In humans it is the ability of individuals or communities to adapt and self-manage when facing physical, mental or social changes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its broader sense in its 1948 constitution as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." This definition has been subject to controversy, in particular as lacking operational value, the ambiguity in developing cohesive health strategies, and because of the problem created by use of the word "complete".

Other definitions have been proposed, among which a recent definition that correlates health and personal satisfaction.

Biomedical research (or experimental medicine) is in general simply known as medical research.

It is the basic research (also called bench science or bench research), applied research, or translational research conducted to aid and support the development of knowledge in the field of medicine.

A disease is a particular abnormal condition, a disorder of a structure or function, that affects part or all of an organism.

The study of disease is called pathology which includes the study of cause.

Disease is often construed as a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs.

It may be caused by external factors such as pathogens, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions particularly of the immune system such as an immunodeficiency, or a hypersensitivity including allergies and autoimmunity.

Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of science focusing on genomes.

A genome is a complete set of DNA within a single cell of an organism, and as such genomics is a branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes.

Genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of genes, which direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules.

Proteins in turn make up body structures like organs and tissues as well as control chemical reactions and carry signals between cells.

If a cell's DNA is mutated, an abnormal protein may be produced, which can disrupt the body's usual processes and in some cases lead to diseases such as cancer.

In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics is the study of genes, their functions, and related techniques, such as applications of recombinant DNA, DNA sequencing methods, and bioinformatics to sequence, assemble, and analyze the function and structure of genomes.

Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research to understand even the most complex biological systems such as the brain.

The field includes efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping.

The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis, epistasis, pleiotropy and other interactions between loci and alleles within the genome.

Research carried out into single genes does not generally fall into the definition of genomics unless the aim of this genetic, pathway, and functional information analysis is to elucidate its effect on, place in, and response to the entire genomes networks.