ORCID Profile
0000-0003-1886-2533
Current Organisation
University of Leeds
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-2007
DOI: 10.1038/NRG2100
Abstract: Protein complexes that contain chromatin-modifying enzymes have an important role in regulating gene expression. Recent studies have shown that a single transcription factor, the repressor element 1-silencing transcription factor (REST), can act as a hub for the recruitment of multiple chromatin-modifying enzymes, uncovering interdependencies among in idual enzymes that affect gene regulation. Research into the function of REST and its corepressors has provided novel insight into how chromatin-modifying proteins cooperate, and how alterations in this function cause disease. These mechanisms will be relevant to the combinatorial functioning of modular transcriptional regulators that work together to regulate a common promoter they should also identify targets for potential therapies for a range of human diseases.
Publisher: Humana Press
Date: 2008
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-59745-526-8_1
Abstract: A comprehensive understanding of regulatory protein interactions with their target genes is fundamental to determining transcriptional networks and identifying important events in the regulation of gene expression. Here we describe how transcriptional regulatory regions are to be identified using luciferase assays (including the transfection of cells by Amaxa and lipid-based reagents) and how protein-DNA interactions are to be characterised by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) coupled with quantitative PCR. Together these techniques provide a powerful combination for investigating potassium channel gene regulation.
Publisher: Portland Press Ltd.
Date: 25-10-2006
DOI: 10.1042/BST0341138
Abstract: Cardiac hypertrophy is an increase in the size of cardiac myocytes to generate increased muscle mass, usually driven by increased workload for the heart. Although important during postnatal development and an adaptive response to physical exercise, excessive hypertrophy can result in heart failure. One characteristic of hypertrophy is the re-expression of genes that are normally only expressed during foetal heart development. Although the involvement of these changes in gene expression in hypertrophy has been known for some years, the mechanisms involved in this re-expression are only now being elucidated and the transcription factor REST (repressor element 1-silencing transcription factor) has been identified as an important repressor of hypertrophic gene expression.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2007
DOI: 10.1128/MCB.00269-07
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 26-07-2006
DOI: 10.1093/NAR/GKL525
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2006
Publisher: Portland Press Ltd.
Date: 27-08-2008
DOI: 10.1042/BJ20080963
Abstract: The nervous system contains a multitude of cell types which are specified during development by cascades of transcription factors acting combinatorially. Some of these transcription factors are only active during development, whereas others continue to function in the mature nervous system to maintain appropriate gene-expression patterns in differentiated cells. Underpinning the function of the nervous system is its plasticity in response to external stimuli, and many transcription factors are involved in regulating gene expression in response to neuronal activity, allowing us to learn, remember and make complex decisions. Here we review some of the recent findings that have uncovered the molecular mechanisms that underpin the control of gene regulatory networks within the nervous system. We highlight some recent insights into the gene-regulatory circuits in the development and differentiation of cells within the nervous system and discuss some of the mechanisms by which synaptic transmission influences transcription-factor activity in the mature nervous system. Mutations in genes that are important in epigenetic regulation (by influencing DNA methylation and post-translational histone modifications) have long been associated with neuronal disorders in humans such as Rett syndrome, Huntington's disease and some forms of mental retardation, and recent work has focused on unravelling their mechanisms of action. Finally, the discovery of microRNAs has produced a paradigm shift in gene expression, and we provide some ex les and discuss the contribution of microRNAs to maintaining dynamic gene regulatory networks in the brain.
Publisher: Portland Press Ltd.
Date: 22-07-2008
DOI: 10.1042/BST0360599
Abstract: Many human diseases are the result of inappropriate changes in gene expression resulting in deleterious phenotypes of specific cells. For ex le, loss of expression of tumour suppressors and/or ectopic expression of oncogenes underlie many cancers, a switch from an adult to a fetal gene-expression profile in cardiac myocytes results in cardiac hypertrophy and changes in the expression of many ion channel genes leads to a phenotypic switch from contractile to proliferative smooth muscle cells in vascular diseases such as neointimal hyperplasia and atherosclerosis. Understanding the molecular mechanisms responsible for these changes in gene expression is a major goal, in order to identify novel therapeutic targets.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 20-07-2006
DOI: 10.1111/J.1471-4159.2006.04010.X
Abstract: Release of distinct cellular cargoes in response to specific stimuli is a process fundamental to all higher eukaryotes and controlled by the regulated secretory pathway (RSP). However, the mechanism by which genes involved in the RSP are selectively expressed, leading to the establishment and appropriate functioning of regulated secretion remaining largely unknown. Using the rat pheochromocytoma cell line PC12, we provide evidence that, by controlling expression of many genes involved in the RSP, the transcriptional repressor REST can regulate this pathway and hence the neurosecretory phenotype. Introduction of REST transgenes into PC12 cells leads to the repression of many genes, the products of which are involved in regulated secretion. Moreover, chromatin immunoprecipitation assays show that many of the repressed genes recruit the recombinant REST protein to RE1 sites within their promoters and abrogation of REST function leads to reactivation of these transcripts. In addition to the observed transcriptional effects, PC12 cells expressing REST have fewer secretory granules and a reduction in the ability to store and release noradrenaline. Furthermore, an important trigger for synaptic release, influx of calcium through voltage-operated calcium channels, is compromised. This is the first demonstration of a transcription factor that directly controls expression of many major components of the RSP and provides further insight into the function of REST.
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 04-2011
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Ian Wood.