Area of Specialization : Molecular Biology (nuclear receptor signaling in animals)
Achievement : Dr. Abdur Razzaque and his associates at the University of Hyogo (Japan) cloned rat ERRgamma as an interacting partner of an orphan nuclear receptor termed small heterodimer partner (SHP). ERRgamma is a third member of the estrogen receptor-related receptor (ERR) subfamily of orphan (= that lack identified ligands) nuclear receptors. They reported that ERRgamma recognizes a enormously broad range of sequences as a homodimer. Furthermore, their studies reveal that SHP efficiently represses the transcriptional activity of ERRgamma at a concentration far lower than ERRgamma.
Future Plan : In his new position he will be working on congenital heart diseases - mostly screening the mutants and searching for
new genes responsible for heart diseases and analyzing their functions both in vitro and in vivo.
Research Interest : Nuclear Receptor Signalling, Transcription Factors and Gene Regulation
Latest Publications :
Razzaque MA, Masuda N, Maeda Y, Endo Y, Tsukamoto T, Osumi T. (2004)Estrogen receptor-related receptor gamma has an exceptionally broad specificity of DNA sequence recognition. Gene 340(2):275-82.