Department of Medicine

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Faculty Profile

• Faculty List
  • Adamson
  • Ball
  • Bazhenova
  • Boles
  • Carrera
  • Carrier
  • Castro
  • Cavenee
  • Curtin
  • Daniels
  • Fanta
  • Feramisco
  • Ginsberg
  • Helsten
  • Herbst
  • Holman
  • Howell
  • Jamieson
  • Kaushansky
  • Kipps
  • Kirmani
  • Kolodner
  • Millard
  • Muchmore
  • Parker
  • Pilz
  • Read
  • Reid E
  • Reid T
  • Schwab
  • Shattil
  • Varki
  • Varner
  • Wachsman
  • Wang
  • Zanetti

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Education and Training

BS and BA	Biochemistry, University of California, Davis	1974
Ph.D	Biochemistry, University of California, Davis	1974-1979
Postdoctoral Fellow	Cell Biology, Cold Spring Harbor	1979-1980

 

Research Interests

Dr. Feramisco’s research interests lie in the br0dd area of understanding the biochemical basis of the signal transduction pathways that regulate cell growth. This work is aimed primarily at the analysis of the function of the intracellular protooncogene products, and extends into studies of the common signals that may regulate certain types of cancer cell growth, differentiation and hypertrophy. Over the past 20 years, he has contributed to the understanding of the molecular and cellular regulatory processes relating to the cytoskeleton and myogenesis, growth regulation by the Ras oncogene protein and other G-protein elements, protein kinase activities in living cells, and cell cycle regulation at the G1/S boundary.

Current work is focused on two areas of research: control of growth and differentiation of the human tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), and regulation of cell growth in the pre-cancerous lesion of the human eye, called pterygium. Through the combination of molecular studies in cell culture models and ectopic gene expression, his lab is making inroads into the understanding of the molecular basis of these diseases. In rhabdomyosarcoma cells, many show normal expression of myogenic factors such as Myo D. In spite of this, the cells fail to growth arrest and differentiate when exposed to signals which should stimulate these events. By exploring the molecular and cellular responses (or lack thereof) of RMS cells to these cues, it is hoped to determine the molecular basis for this failure. For pterygium, he has established call culture models and have begun to identify the expression patterns of important growth regulatory genes in both the normal precursor cells and the diseased pterygial cells. By these determinations and by alteration of the expression of these genes, it is hoped to establish the molecular basis of the abnormal growth of these cells as well.

Over the past several years, Dr. Feramisco’s lab has developed new approaches to examine the function of intracellular proteins. The main tactic has been to use somatic cell microinjection facilitated by glass capillaries. This work has allowed for the facile introduction of purified proteins, genes or inhibitory antibodies into living cultured cells, and has aided in the discovery of biological activities of several key intracellular signal transduction proteins. He believes that this type of functional analysis of the signal pathways that regulate certain differentiated functions will prove to be critical in the understanding of these biological functions.

Publications

Miller YI, Worral DS, Funk CD, Jeramisco JR, Witztum JL. Actin polymerization in macrophages in response to oxidized LDL and apoptotic cells. Role of 12/15-lipoxygenase and phosphoinositide 3-kinase. Mol Biol Cell, 14:4196-206, 2003.

Roth DM, Lai NC, Gao MH, Drumm JD, Jimenez J, Feramisco JR, Hammond HK, Indirect intracoronary delivery of adenovirus encoding adenylyl cyclase increases left ventriclar contractile function in mice. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, 287:H172-177, 2004.

Pashmforoush M, Lu J, Chen H, Amand T, Kondo R, Pradervand S, Evans S, Clark B, Feramisco J, Giles W, Ho S, Benson D, Silverback M. Shou W, Chien K. Nkx2-5 pathways and congenital heart disease; loss of ventricular myocyte lineage specification leads to prog. cardiomyopathy and complete heart block. Cell, 117:373-86, 2004.

Soloff R, Ktayama C, Lin M. Feramisco J, Hedrick S. Targeted deletion of PKC lambda reveals a distribution of functions between the two atypical PKC isoforms. J Immunology, 173:3250-60, 2004.

Gao, MH, Tang T, Guo T, Sun S, Feramisco JR, Hammond HK. Adenylyl cyclase type VI down-regulates the expression of phospholamban through ATF3 in a cAMP-independent manner in neonatal rat cardiac myocytes, J Biol Chem, 279:38797-802, 2004.

Seasholtz T, R adeff-Huang J, Sagi S, Matteo R, Weems J, Cohen A, Feramisco JR, Brown JH. Rho-mediated cytoskeletal rearrangement in response to LPA is functionally antagonized by Rac1 abd PIP2, J Neurochem, 91:501-512, 2004.

Szeszel M, Crisman C, Crowe L, McMullen S, Major J, Natarajan L, Saquib A, Pierce J, Feramisco J, Wasserman J. Quantifying estrogen and progesterone receptor expression in breast cancer by digital imaging. Histochem Cytochem 53:753-62, 2005

Ding JH, Zhong XY, Hagopian JC, Cruz MM, Ghosh G, Feramisco J, Adams JA, Fu XD. Regulated cellular partition of SR protein-specific kinases in mammalian cells. Mol Biol Cell, 17:876-85, 2006.

Buchanan J, Simpson A, Aziz R, Liu G, Kristian S, Kotb M, Feramisco J, Nizet V. DNase expression allows the pathogen group A s treptococcus to escape killing in neutorphil extracellular traps, Current Biology, 16:396-400, 2006.

Sastry A, Arnold E, Gurji H, Iwasa A, Bui H, Hassankhani A, Patel HH, Feramisco JR, Roth DM, Lai NC, Hammond NK, Narayan SM. Cardiac-directed expression of adenylyl cyclase VI facilities atrioventricular nodal conduction. J Am Coll Cardiol, 48:559-65, Epub 2006.

Laboratory