Functional targets of the monogenic diabetes transcription factors HNF-1alpha and HNF-4alpha are highly conserved between mice and humans.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The evolutionary conservation of transcriptional mechanisms has been widely exploited to understand human biology and disease. Recent findings, however, unexpectedly showed that the transcriptional regulators hepatocyte nuclear factor (HNF)-1alpha and -4alpha rarely bind to the same genes in mice and humans, leading to the proposal that tissue-specific transcriptional regulation has undergone extensive divergence in the two species. Such observations have major implications for the use of mouse models to understand HNF-1alpha- and HNF-4alpha-deficient diabetes. However, the significance of studies that assess binding without considering regulatory function is poorly understood.

Research design and methods

We compared previously reported mouse and human HNF-1alpha a

SUBMITTER: Boj SF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2671044 | biostudies-literature | 2009 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature