The National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases

Our team decodes genetic pathways traveled by cytokines and transcription factors from the STAT family, with an emphasis on STAT5. After having cloned the corresponding genes from the mouse in 1995 and generating in 1997 the first mouse that lacks STAT5a, our group has continued to use conditional mouse genetics as a discovery tool. These studies elucidated cell-specific functions of STAT5, from the establishment of mammary alveolar progenitors and the differentiation to its tumor suppressor function in liver.

Current research is aimed at the intersection of cytokine-STAT5 modules as transcriptional factories for protein coding and microRNA genes and their possible role in context-specific chromatin modeling. Our workhorse remains the mouse as it permits studies to understand genetic principles of physiology and disease. The molecular reasoning is being studied using large-scale genomics and primary cells.

Lothar Hennighausen has obtained a PhD from the University of Koeln (Germany) and after a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School he joined the National Institutes of Health in 1985.
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Kyung Hyun Ryu (Yoo)

Jennifer Zhao