Robert H. Oakley

Current position: Staff scientist in the Molecular Endocrinology Group, Laboratory of Signal Transduction, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

Education: Ph.D. in physiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997

Nonscientific interests: Spending time with my wife and children, working in Christian ministries that serve at-risk children, Bible study, jogging, and basketball

My interest in signal transduction began in high school and continued while majoring in biology at Furman University. Fascinated with the complexity and diversity of cell signaling pathways, I studied nuclear receptor signaling as a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. John Cidlowski at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and G protein-coupled receptor signaling as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Marc Caron at Duke University. After a six-year stint at a drug discovery company, I returned to Cidlowski's laboratory at NIEHS and am currently investigating the molecular factors controlling the specificity and sensitivity of glucocorticoid signaling. In our review, Cidlowski and I discuss the origin and molecular properties of the large cohort of glucocorticoid receptor subtypes that arise from the single glucocorticoid receptor gene. We hypothesize that the heterogeneity in glucocorticoid receptor isoforms contributes to the unique biological responses elicited by glucocorticoids in healthy and diseased tissues.

Read Oakley' article on page 3177.

John A. Cidlowski

Current position: Chief of the Laboratory of Signal Transduction and head of the Molecular Endocrinology Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

Education: Ph.D. in endocrinology from the Medical College of Georgia in 1975

Nonscientific interests: Fishing and hunting around the world

Glucocorticoids are necessary for life after birth and regulate numerous biological processes in man, including glucose homeostasis, protein catabolism, skeletal growth, respiratory function, inflammation, development, behavior and apoptosis. They are also one of the most prescribed classes of anti-inflammatory drugs in the world. Our understanding of how one hormone or drug regulates all of these diverse processes in a tissue specific fashion is still incomplete. Although most of these actions are thought to be mediated via the glucocorticoid receptor that is a product of a single gene. My colleagues and I at the NIH have focused our research on the biochemistry, molecular biology and physiology of glucocorticoids and their receptors in man and rodent with a primary goal of elucidating signaling mechanisms in both. In our review we highlight recent developments which reveal the use of alternative translation initiative to produce multiple glucocorticoid receptors from a single gene. These receptor isoforms have distinct tissue localization and regulate unique sets of genes. We hypothesize that this receptor diversity contributes to the unique biology of glucocorticoids in different tissues.

Read Cidlowski's article on page 3177.