Dr. Mojgan Rastegar – Research Associate, 2005-2008
Mojgan Rastegar completed her PhD in Brussels and postdoctoral fellowships at Indianapolis and McGill where she studied Hox gene expression during mouse neurogenesis. Her current interests are retrovirus vector silencing and gene therapy of Rett syndrome using neural stem cells.
Next Position
Rastegar is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics and the primary member of the Regenerative Medicine Program at the University of Manitoba. Rastegar’s lab is focused on the epigenetics of stem cell neurogenesis. She studies the molecular mechanisms of stem cell differentiation by elucidating the role of specific genes and epigenetic modifications during embryonic stem (ES) cell and neural stem cell (NSC) differentiation. The main objective of her research is to explore the potential of stem cell differentiation for generating specific cell types for treatment of neurological disorders in regenerative medicine.
Selected Publications
Rastegar M, Hotta A, Pasceri P, Makarem M, Cheung AYL, Elliot S, Park KJ, Adachi M, Jones FS, Clarke ID, Dirks P, Ellis J. (2009) MECP2 isoform-specific vectors with regulated expression for Rett Syndrome gene therapy. PLoS ONE 4(8):e6810.
Delcuve GP, Rastegar M, Davie JR. (2009) Epigenetic control. Journal of Cellular Physiology. 219(2): 243-50.
Ellis J, Hotta A, Rastegar M. (2007) Retrovirus silencing by an epigenetic TRIM. Cell. 131(1): 13-14.
Nolte C*, Rastegar M*, Amores A, Bouchard M, Grote D, Maas R, Nagy Kovacs E, Postlethwait J, Rambaldi I, Rowan Sh, Zhang F, Featherstone M. (2006) Stereospecificity and PAX6 function direct Hoxd4 neural enhancer activity along the antero-posterior axis. *Equal corresponding authors. Developmental Biology. 15-299(2):582-93.
Kobrossy L, Rastegar M, Featherstone M. (2006) Interplay between chromatin and trans-acting factors regulating the Hoxd4 promoter during neural differentiation. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 281(36):25926.39.
Huang H, Rastegar M, Bodner C, Goh SL, Rambaldi I, Featherstone M. (2005) MEIS C termini harbor transcriptional activation domains that respond to cell signaling. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 280:10119-27.
Rastegar M, Kobrossy L, Nagy Kovacs E, Rambaldi I, Featherstone M. (2004) Sequential histone modifications at Hoxd4 regulatory regions distinguish anterior from posterior embryonic compartments. Molecular and Cellular Biology. 24:8090-8103.
Wu CH, Rastegar M, Gordon J, Safa AR. (2001) Beta(2)-microglobulin induces apoptosis in HL-60 human leukemia cell line and its multidrug resistant variants overexpressing MRP1 but lacking Bax or overexpressing P-glycoprotein. Oncogene. 20:7006-7020.
Rastegar M, Rousseau GG, Lemaigre FP. (2000) CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein-alpha is a component of the growth hormone-regulated network of liver transcription factors. Endocrinology. 141:1686-1692.
Rastegar M, Szpirer C, Rousseau GG, Lemaigre FP. (1998) Hepatocyte nuclear factor 6: organization and chromosomal assignment of the rat gene and characterization of its promoter. Biochemical Journal. 334:565-569.