Neurological Disease: Listening to Gene Silencers

  1. Avtar Roopra,
  2. Yunfei Huang and
  3. Raymond Dingledine
  1. Department of Pharmacology Emory University School of Medicine 1510 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322

Abstract

Neurons regulate the expression of genes essential to individual neuron function through elegant combinatorial interactions among a limited number of transcription factors. In addition, an economy of regulatory control is practiced within the nucleus that belies conceptual divisions of transcription factors into “repressors” and “activators.” Studies of the neural restrictive silencer element (NRSE, also known as RE1) and its repressor protein have revealed a multitude of mechanisms by which transcriptional regulation is not only elaborated in normal neuronal development, but perverted in disease states.

Graphic Cell differentiation and specialization depend on the concerted expression and repression of specific genes. Investigations of neuronal gene regulation are unifying mechanisms of up- and downregulation of gene expression that have previously been regarded as disparate.

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