Publications by authors named "Sarah S Williams"

Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHC) is a disease characterized by ventricular hypertrophy, fibrosis, and aberrant systolic and/or diastolic function. We previously developed two transgenic mouse models that carry FHC-associated mutations in alpha-tropomyosin (TM): FHC alpha-TM175 mice show patchy areas of mild ventricular disorganization and limited hypertrophy, whereas FHC alpha-TM180 mice exhibit severe hypertrophy and fibrosis and die within 6 mo. To obtain a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms associated with the early onset of cardiac hypertrophy, we conducted a detailed comparative analysis of gene expression in 2.

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Although retinoic acid (RA), the active form of vitamin A, is required for normal embryonic growth and development, it is also a powerful teratogen. Infants born to mothers exposed to retinoids during pregnancy have a 25-fold increased risk for malformations, nearly exclusively of cranial neural crest-derived tissues. To characterize neural crest cell responses to RA, we exposed murine crest cultures to teratogenic levels of RA and subjected their RNA to microarray-based gene expression profile analysis using Affymetrix MG-U74Av2 GeneChips.

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Background: Previous research suggests that children with pure-tone averages of greater than 90 dB hearing level and/or open-set sentence perception of less than 30% may derive significant benefit from cochlear implantation.

Objective: To evaluate postoperative speech perception benefit and bilateral-bimodal benefit for 16 children whose preimplant speech perception scores exceeded conservative candidacy guidelines.

Study Design: Preimplant and postimplant repeated-measure design.

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To understand the commitment of the genome to nervous system differentiation and function, we sought to compare nervous system gene expression to that of a wide variety of other tissues by gene expression database construction and mining. Gene expression profiles of 10 different adult nervous tissues were compared with that of 72 other tissues. Using ANOVA, we identified 1,361 genes whose expression was higher in the nervous system than other organs and, separately, 600 genes whose expression was at least threefold higher in one or more regions of the nervous system compared with their median expression across all organs.

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A frequent characteristic of human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive cervical cancers is the loss of viral E2 gene expression in HPV-infected cervical epithelial cells as a consequence of viral DNA integration into the cellular genome. The expression of E2 in HPV-positive cancer cells results in the repression of the viral E6/E7 oncogenes, activation of the p53 and pRB pathways, and a G1 cell cycle arrest, followed by induction of cellular senescence. The transcriptional consequences of E2-mediated cell cycle arrest that lead to senescence currently are unknown.

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Background & Aims: A genome-level understanding of the molecular basis of segmental gene expression along the anterior-posterior (A-P) axis of the mammalian gastrointestinal (GI) tract is lacking. We hypothesized that functional patterning along the A-P axis of the GI tract could be defined at the molecular level by analyzing expression profiles of large numbers of genes.

Methods: Incyte GEM1 microarrays containing 8638 complementary DNAs (cDNAs) were used to define expression profiles in adult mouse stomach, duodenum, jejunum, ileum, cecum, proximal colon, and distal colon.

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