Contact information (MSU)

National Food Safety & Toxicology Center and the
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1319
MSU E-mail: niwar@msu.edu

Contact information (Japan)
Assistant Professor (1988 to present)
Laboratory of Microbiology and Host Defenses
School of Food and Nutritional Sciences
University of Shizuoka
52-1 Yada, Shizuoka-shi, Shizuoka 422-8526, Japan.
Phone: +81(Japan)-54-264-5554.
Fax: +81(Japan)-54-264-5553.
E-mail: kuruto@smail.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp

I have been studying endocrine disrupting chemicals and their antagonists using reporter gene assays. Recently, I constructed a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-reporter vector regulated by an estrogen response element
(ERE) and transfected into human breast carcinoma MCF7 cells. Stably transfected MCF-7 cells expressed GFP in an estrogen-dependent manner. Then a simple GFP expression system to detect estrogenic chemicals using a quantitative fluorescent imaging system was devised.

My current research project at MSU is to investigate gene expression profiles of endogenous estrogen and other estrogenic chemicals such as genistein in Hepa1c1c7 (C57 L/J mouse hepatocytes) cells. Gene expression comparisons will be performed using DNA microarrays and real-time PCR.