The insulin promoter binds a number of tissue-specific and ubiquitous transcription factors. Of these, the homoeodomain protein PDX-1 (pancreatic duodenal homeobox factor-1), the basic leucine zipper protein MafA and the basic helix-loop-helix heterodimer E47/BETA2 (beta-cell E box transactivator 2; referred to here as beta2) bind to important regulatory sites. Previous studies have shown that ...

LUMAN/CREB3 is a stress regulatory gene that affects activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in mice and presents promising avenue for exploring variable stress-responsiveness pigs. Pigs with similar characteristics to LUMAN-deficient mice, including greater resilience receptivity human handling, would be valuable pork industry from animal welfare production efficiency perspectives....

The unfolded protein response (UPR), an evolutionarily conserved transcriptional induction program that is coupled with intracellular signaling from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the nucleus, is activated to cope with ER stress and to maintain the homeostasis of the ER. In 1996, we isolated a basic leucine zipper protein, which had been previously named activating transcription factor (ATF)...

The human host cell factor (HCF) is expressed in a variety of adult and fetal tissues, and its gene is conserved in animals as diverse as mammals and insects. However, its only known function is to stabilize the herpes simplex virus virion transactivator VP16 in a complex with the cellular POU domain protein Oct-1 and cis-acting regulatory elements in promoters of immediate-early viral genes. T...

The mitogen-activated kinases are structurally related proline-directed serine/threonine kinases that phosphorylate similar phosphoacceptor sites and yet, in vivo, they exhibit stringent substrate specificity. Specific targeting domains (kinase docking domains) facilitate kinase-substrate interaction and play a major role in substrate specificity determination. The c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)...