Master regulator genes and their impact on major diseases

Wanwan Cai; Wanbang Zhou; Zhe Han; Junrong Lei; Jian Zhuang; Ping Zhu; Xiushan Wu; Wuzhou Yuan

doi:10.7717/peerj.9952

Master regulator genes and their impact on major diseases

PeerJ. 2020 Oct 6:8:e9952. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9952. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Wanwan Cai^#¹, Wanbang Zhou^#², Zhe Han³, Junrong Lei², Jian Zhuang⁴, Ping Zhu⁴, Xiushan Wu¹, Wuzhou Yuan¹

Affiliations

¹ The Center for Heart Development, State Key Laboratory of Development Biology of Freshwater Fish, Key Laboratory of MOE for Development Biology and Protein Chemistry, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
² College of Physical Education, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
³ University of Maryland School of Medicine, Center for Precision Disease Modeling, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁴ Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Department of Cardiac Surgery, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Master regulator genes (MRGs) have become a hot topic in recent decades. They not only affect the development of tissue and organ systems but also play a role in other signal pathways by regulating additional MRGs. Because a MRG can regulate the concurrent expression of several genes, its mutation often leads to major diseases. Moreover, the occurrence of many tumors and cardiovascular and nervous system diseases are closely related to MRG changes. With the development in omics technology, an increasing amount of investigations will be directed toward MRGs because their regulation involves all aspects of an organism's development. This review focuses on the definition and classification of MRGs as well as their influence on disease regulation.

Keywords: Cardiovascular disease; Signal pathway; Tumor diseases; Master regulator genes; Nervous system disease.

Grants and funding

This study was supported in part by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.: 81370451, 81470449, 81670290, 81570279), the Cooperative Innovation Center of Engineering and New Products for Developmental Biology of Hunan Province (No. 2013-448-6). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.