UR Faculty: A. William Tank, Ph.D.

My laboratory is interested in how the nervous system adapts at a molecular and cellular level to changes in the organism’s activity or environment. More specifically, we study changes in gene expression in brain and peripheral nervous system in response to long-term stress, environmental insults that lead to nerve damage, or chronic administration of addictive drugs of abuse. We focus on the gene encoding tyrosine hydroxylase, which is the enzyme that catalyzes the key step in the synthesis of catecholamines, such as dopamine and norepinephrine. These are important neurotransmitters in both the central and peripheral nervous systems. Our research is aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms, cell signaling pathways and receptors that regulate tyrosine hydroxylase gene expression at both the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. These studies will shed light on the intracellular mechanisms that control gene expression in the nervous system during periods of stress, in Parkinson’s disease and in addiction.

Recent Publications

Sun, B., Chen, X., Xu, L., Sterling, C., and Tank, A.W. (2004) Chronic nicotine treatment leads to induction of tyrosine hydroxylase in locus coeruleus neurons: The role of transcriptional activation. Mol. Pharmacol. 66:1011-1021.

Yoshimura, R., Xu, L., Sun, B., and Tank, A.W. (2004) Nicotinic and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors are essential for the long-term response of tyrosine hydroxylase gene expression to chronic nicotine treatment in rat adrenal medulla. Mol. Brain Res. 126:188-197.

Nagase, H., Yamakuni, T., Matsuzaki, K., Maruyama, Y., Kasahara, J., Hinohara, Y., Kondo, S., Mimaki, Y., Sashida, Y., Tank, A.W., Fukunaga, K., and Ohizumi, Y. (2005) Mechanism of neurotrophic action of nobiletin in PC12D cells. Biochemistry 44:13683-13691.

Osterhout, C.A., Sterling, C.R., Chikaraishi, D.M., and Tank, A.W. (2005) Induction of tyrosine hydroxylase in the locus coeruleus of transgenic mice in response to stress or nicotine treatment: Lack of activation of tyrosine hydroxylase promoter activity. J. Neurochem. 94:731-741.

PubMed Publication List

PubMed is maintained by the National Library of Medicine
and provides complete abstracts of all 'tank aw' publications,
as well as links to the full text of many articles (at journal homepages).

Back to Pharmacology and Physiology

GEBS Clusters:

CMM