Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) is an Open Access biomedical research journal advancing novel insight into the mechanism, diagnosis and therapy of human disease.
DMM is committed to publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research in disease biology that has significant translational impact at the interface of basic and clinical science. Our content is freely available to our communities of basic and clinical researchers, health professionals, patients and their advocates and families. DMM is interdisciplinary in scope, and covers a diverse range of diseases. We also publish cutting-edge techniques and resources that advance the disease biology field.
DMM is led by an international team of expert research-active Editors, including Editor-in-Chief Liz Patton and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Elaine Mardis, and supported by an outstanding Editorial Advisory Board.
Interdisciplinary approaches to combatting antimicrobial resistance
Register now for our one-day meeting on interdisciplinary approaches to combatting antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To be held on Wednesday 26 March 2025, at the Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool, UK, this event is organised by Katherine R. Duncan (University of Newcastle, UK) and Serge Mostowy (The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK).
The programme has three major themes: (i) drug discovery in the ‘omics era, (ii) cellular mechanisms of AMR, and (iii) detecting and tackling AMR in the environment and clinic. Find out more about the meeting and our great line up of speakers.
Call for Papers: Special Issue – Infectious Disease: Evolution, Mechanism and Global Health
DMM welcomes submissions for our upcoming Special Issue, coordinated by DMM Editors Sumana Sanyal (University of Oxford, UK) and David Tobin (Duke University, USA), alongside Guest Editors Judi Allen (The University of Manchester, UK) and Russell Vance (University of California, Berkeley, USA). Submission deadline: 24 February 2025.
Find out more about the issue and how to submit.
Editorial
Making sense of missense: challenges and opportunities in variant pathogenicity prediction
Ivan Molotkov, Elaine Mardis and Mykyta Artomov discuss in silico tools used to predict missense variant pathogenicity, with a focus on AlphaMissense, highlighting their strengths, limitations and challenges in unbiased performance benchmarking.
A Model for Life
From mechanisms of carcinogenesis to early intervention: an interview with Ashok Venkitaraman
DMM interviewed Ashok Venkitaraman, who has made seminal discoveries on the tumour-suppressive mechanisms of the BRCA2 gene in maintaining genome integrity. We discuss his outstanding research journey, how this has translated to tangible clinical outcomes and how these outcomes can be shared globally.
The Patient's Voice
Scaling up the impact of melanoma advocacy: an interview with Bettina Ryll
Bettina Ryll, a research scientist and physician by training, is the founder of the Melanoma Patient Network Europe. She discusses her personal experience and motivation in patient advocacy, and her strategies to expand the impact of her work to benefit all people with melanoma.
Editor's choice
Generation of a zebrafish neurofibromatosis model via inducible knockout of nf2a/b by Ayyappa Raja Desingu Rajan, Yuanyun Huang, Jan Stundl, Katelyn Chu, Anushka Irodi, Zihan Yang, Brian Applegate and Marianne Bronner
In this month’s Editor's choice Research Article, Marianne Bronner and colleagues generated a conditional zebrafish model of neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF-2), a disorder leading to benign tumours in the nervous system and peripheral nerves. Inducible knockout of the NF-2 genes nf2a/b triggered the development of a spectrum of tumours, mirroring the complexities of human NF-2.
Lukas Sommer highlights the importance of this zebrafish model not only to gain insights into the disease mechanisms of NF-2, but also to screen for therapeutic drugs.
Visualising disease biology research
Images are a cornerstone of scientific communication, and are crucial in conveying complex biological concepts and functions.
As a fully Open Access journal, DMM strives to communicate high-quality basic and translational research in disease biology to a broad audience of scientists, clinicians and patients.
Read and share our collection of At A Glance poster articles for free.
Biological resilience in health and disease by Helen Weavers
High-throughput assays to assess variant effects on disease by Kaiyue Ma, Logan Gauthier, Frances Cheung, Shushu Huang and Monkol Lek
Degron tagging for rapid protein degradation in mice by Brianda Hernández-Morán, Gillian Taylor, Álvaro Lorente-Macías and Andrew Wood
Heart in a dish – choosing the right in vitro model by Lika Drakhlis and Robert Zweigerdt