Research Abstract:
Our long-term interests have been to use yeast and retroviruses to look at questions of transcriptional regulation. To address these questions we used appropriate genetic and footprinting approaches to analyze protein-DNA interactions at promoters in their natural chromosomal contexts. The results of these studies pointed to the important roles of cooperative interactions between transcription factors, and competing interactions between these same factors and chromatin structural components, in transcriptional regulation. More recently we have been using some of the same tools we developed for our transcriptional studies to look at the replication of several plus-stranded RNA viruses. We are testing whether steps in the replication of these viruses (principally Hepatitis C Virus) can be subjected to genetic analysis in yeast.
Selected Publications:
Frolova E, Johnston M, Majors J. Binding of the glucose-dependent mig1p repressor to the GAL1 and GAL4 promoters in vivo: Regulation by glucose and chromatin structure. Nucleic Acids Res 1999 27:1350-1358.
Reagan M, Majors JE. The chromatin structure of the GAL1 promoter forms independently of Reb1p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mol Gen Genet 1998 9:142-149.
Axelrod JD, Reagan MS, Majors J. GAL4 disrupts a repressing nucleosome during activation of GAL1 transcription in vivo. Genes Dev 1993 7:857-869.
Galileo DS, Majors J, Horwitz AF, et al. Retrovirally introduced antisense integrin RNA inhibits neuroblast migration in vivo. Neuron 1992 9:1117-1131.
Ghattas IR, Sanes JR, Majors JE. The encephalomyocarditis virus internal ribosome entry site allows efficient coexpression of two genes from a recombinant provirus in cultured cells and in embryos. Mol Cell Biol 1991 11:5848-5849.
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