Menet Lab
Department of Biology, Texas A&M University
Regulation of Rhythmic Gene Expression in Mammals
Most organisms from bacteria to humans exhibit endogenous 24-hours (circadian) rhythms . Best exemplified by the sleep/wake cycle, these rhythms are remarkably widespread and include hormonal, metabolic, physiological and behavioral oscillations. These rhythms have a remarkable adaptive value as they enable most biological functions to perform optimally at the most appropriate time of the day.
Circadian rhythms are generated by “molecular clocks” that drive the rhythmic expression of thousands of genes throughout the body. The wide impact of rhythmic gene expression on the regulation of biological functions is underscored by the surprisingly large number of pathologies developed by organisms having a genetically or environmentally disrupted clock. In addition to
being arrhythmic, they indeed develop pathologies as diverse as mania-like behaviors, learning and memory defects, depression, drug addiction, insomnia, metabolic diseases, arthropathy, hematopoiesis defects and cancers.
Research in the Menet lab aims at characterizing how circadian clocks and clock genes regulate gene expression to provide insights into how and why clock dysfunction leads to a wide spectra of pathologies. To this end, we are using a wide-range of molecular, biochemical and physiological approaches to investigate the circadian clock function at the genome-wide level in mouse. Our current projects focus more particularly on:
1) how clock genes rhythmically regulate the chromatin environment,
2) how rhythmic food intake contributes to driving rhythmic gene expression,
3) how alternative polyadenylation, i.e., a mechanism that generates RNAs with different 3' ends, shapes cycling transcriptomes.
January 2024: Chieh-Wen joins the lab for his Ph.D. Welcome Chieh-Wen!
January 2024: Garima joins the lab for her Ph.D. Welcome Garima!
December 2023: Danny joins the lab as a Research Associate. Welcome Danny!
September 2023: Shivani joins the lab as a Research Assistant. Welcome Shivani!
February 2023: Aishwarya successfully defended her Ph.D. Congrats Aishwarya!
December 2022: Aishwarya presents at TSCBM 2022. Congrats Aishwarya!
July 2022: Audrey Jacq joins the lab as a Post-Doc. Welcome Audrey!
December 2021: Chanté Guy joins the lab for her Ph.D. Welcome Chanté!
October 2021: Xinyu presents her exciting new data at our department SPRC meeting.
January 2021: This was long due... The paper of Alexandra on the effects of shift work in rat heart is finally deposited in Biorxiv.
December 2020: Ben's latest paper on how alternative polyadenylation regulates rhythmic gene expression has been deposited to Biorxiv.
December 2020: Xinyu Nie joins the lab for her Ph.D. Welcome Xinyu!!
June 2020: Ben wins the Aggieland RNA Salon Research Award! Congrats Ben!!
February 2020: Ben successfully defended his Ph.D. Congrats Ben!
News
Latest Publications
Michael AK, Stoos L, Crosby P, Eggers N, Nie XY, Makasheva K, Minnich M, Healy KL, Weiss J, Kempf G, Cavadini S, Kater L, Seebacher J, Vecchia L, Isbel L, Grand RS, Andersch F, Fribourgh JL, Schübeler D, Zuber J, Liu AC, Becker PB, Fierz B, Partch CL, Menet JS, Thomä NH. (2023) Cooperation between bHLH transcription factors and histones for DNA access. Nature. 619, 385-393.