Transcription of genes can be discontinuous, occurring in pulses or bursts. It is not clear how properties of transcriptional pulses vary between different genes. We compared the pulsing of five housekeeping and five developmentally induced genes by direct imaging of single gene transcriptional events in individual living Dictyostelium cells. Each gene displayed its own transcriptional signatur...

Our aim was to identify a suitable microRNA housekeeping gene for real-time PCR analysis of bovine mastitis-related microRNA in milk. We identified , , and as housekeeping gene candidates on the basis of previous Solexa sequencing results. Threshold cycle (CT) values for , , and did not differ between milk from control cows and milk from mastitis-affected cows. NormFinder software identified as...

BACKGROUND We previously reported that specialized and housekeeping genes are differentially regulated via de novo recruitment and pause-release of RNA polymerase II, respectively, during cardiac hypertrophy. However, the significance of this finding remains to be examined. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the mechanisms that differentially regulate these gene groups and ex...

Preeclampsia and diabetes are complications of pregnancy that contribute to maternal and perinatal mortality worldwide. Results emerging from molecular studies of placentae may elucidate etiologically important genomic alterations. Appropriate application of real time reverse transcription (RT) PCR in comparative gene expression studies requires endogenous housekeeping genes to normalize betwee...

Eukaryotic genes are distributed along chromosomes as clusters of highly expressed genes termed RIDGEs (Regions of IncreaseD Gene Expression) and lowly expressed genes termed anti-RIDGEs, interspersed among genes expressed at intermediate levels or not expressed. Previous studies based on this observation suggested a dual mechanism of gene regulation, where, in addition to transcription factors...