Project Summary

William E. Cullinan, Ph.D. (Independent Investigator 2002) of Marquette University, is seeking to understand the brain actions of glucocorticoids in the regulatory biology of stress responsiveness.  He will utilize gene micro-array technology which permits the simultaneous examination of activity of multiple thousands of genes in single experiments.  He will utilize this approach to study a complex neural tissue in an effort to identify novel glucocorticoid-regulated genes in rat brain regions implicated in stress responsiveness; and apply customized micro-arrays to identify changes in gene expression in response to a non-habituating chronic stress paradigm.  The study will seek to provide critical insights into the regulatory control of the stress axis by chronic stress and glucocorticoids and also identify novel glucocorticoid-regulated genes possibly involved in the mechanism of dysregulation of the stress axis observed in animal models of depression.

Program Area: MOOD DISORDERS\Depression (Unipolar)

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