Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Regulation Of Hepatic Gene Expression During Liver Development And Disease, Hui Ren

Theses and Dissertations--Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

My first project was to investigate the role of Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 1 (HNF1) and Nuclear Factor I (NFI) on alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) promoter activity during liver development. AFP is highly expressed in the fetal liver, silenced at birth, and remains at very low levels in the adult liver. A GA substitution located at -119 of the human AFP promoter is associated with hereditary persistence of AFP (HPAFP) expression in the adult liver (Hum Molec Genet, 1993, 2:379). The -120 region harbors overlapping binding sites for HNF1 and NFI. While it has been shown that the GA substitution increases HNF1 binding, …