Regulation of Gene Expression in Chick Oviduct

Excerpt

Estrogen-mediated growth and differentiation of the chick oviduct and the concomitant induction of ovalbumin has proven to be an excellent system for studying the mechanism of steroid hormone action (O'Malley and Means 1974; Jensen et al. 1974; O'Malley and Schrader 1976). Several lines of evidence indicate that steroid hormones act primarily to regulate oviduct gene expression (O'Malley and McGuire 1968; Cox et al. 1973; O'Malley et al. 1972; McKnight et al. 1975; Schwartz et al. 1975; S. Y. Tsai et al. 1975). During primary stimulation of immature chicks, estrogen has a dramatic effect on the level of endogenous RNA polymerase activity (O'Malley et al. 1969; Cox et al. 1973), nuclear RNA synthesis (O'Malley and McGuire 1968; Means et al. 1972; Harris et al. 1975), chromatin template activity (O'Malley et al. 1969; Cox et al. 1973; Spelsberg et al. 1973), and the number of initiation sites on chromatin available for in...