Neurological Disease: Listening to Gene Silencers
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.
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.
- © American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Theraputics 2001
