Functional Targets of the Monogenic Diabetes Transcription Factors HNF-1[alpha] and HNF-4[alpha] Are Highly Conserved Between Mice and Humans

摘要

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.