Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob, our heroes, described a gene-regulatory world run exclusively by repressors. The activities of repressors, their abilities to bind DNA as we later learned, would be controlled — helped or hindered — by small molecules that bind these proteins. They showed [1] that networks of considerable complexity could be created with such a regulatory system. There was no n...

Emerin is the inner nuclear membrane protein involved in maintaining mechanical integrity of membrane. Mutations EMD encoding emerin cause Emery–Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD). Evidence accumulating that regulation specific gene expression associated with this disease, but exact function has not been fully elucidated. Here, we show downregulates Signal transducer and activators transcriptio...

The effects of genetic variants on phenotypic traits often depend on environmental and physiological conditions, but such gene-environment interactions are poorly understood. Recently developed approaches that treat transcript abundances of thousands of genes as quantitative traits offer the opportunity to broadly characterize the architecture of gene-environment interactions. We examined the g...

E2F transcription factor 2 (E2F2) is a member of the family factors. The classical view that some E2Fs act as "activators" and others "inhibitors" cell cycle gene expression. However, so-called "activator" E2F2 particularly enigmatic, with seemingly contradictory roles in cycle, proliferation, apoptosis, inflammation, migration invasion. How can we rationalize apparently opposing functions diff...

Pancreatic beta-cell-type-specific expression of the insulin gene requires both ubiquitous and cell-enriched activators, which are organized within the enhancer region into a network of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions to promote transcriptional synergy. Protein-protein-mediated communication between DNA-bound activators and the RNA polymerase II transcriptional machinery is inhibit...

Regulation of gene expression is fundamental to biological systems, and much of this occurs at the level of transcription initiation. Consider the complexity of the transcriptional regulatory problem in the simple eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Approximately 200 transcriptional activators are thought to be responsible for regulation of 6,200 genes (Fig. 1). At each gene, activators interac...

Atherosclerotic vascular disease, diabetes mellitus (DM) and dementia are major global health problems. Both endogenous and exogenous factors activate genes functioning in biological processes. This review article focuses on gene-activation mechanisms that regress atherosclerosis, eliminate DM type 2 (DM2), and prevent cognitive decline and dementia. Gene-activating compounds upregulating funct...