Endocrine Abstracts

Gene expression in living cells is dynamic and unstable, and fluctuations in transcription may be subject to stochastic regulation of processes including transcription factor and polymerase recruitment, and chromatin remodelling. One gene that has been shown to display dynamically variable transcription and marked heterogeneity between cells is prolactin (PRL). Time-lapse imaging of PRL-reporter gene expression in single rat pituitary GH3 cells revealed distinct long-term tran...

Prolactin (PRL) is a hormone mainly produced by the lactotroph cells of the anterior pituitary gland. Besides its pivotal role in reproduction, PRL has also been found to have immuno-modulatory properties. The pituitary is the main source of circulating PRL, however it is also expressed in humans at extra-pituitary sites1. In extra-pituitary tissues, PRL mRNA contains an extra exon (exon 1a), and expression is regulated by an alternative promoter upstream of the pit...