Scholars@Duke
Jason Alexander Watts

Jason Alexander Watts

Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine
Medicine, Nephrology

Selected Publications

Study of foxA pioneer factor at silent genes reveals Rfx-repressed enhancer at Cdx2 and a potential indicator of esophageal adenocarcinoma development

Journal Article PLoS Genetics · 2011 Understanding how silent genes can be competent for activation provides insight into development as well as cellular reprogramming and pathogenesis. We performed genomic location analysis of the pioneer transcription factor FoxA in the adult mouse liver an ... Full text Cite

Transcriptional competence and the active marking of tissue-specific enhancers by defined transcription factors in embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells

Journal Article Genes and Development · 2009 We reported previously that well-characterized enhancers but not promoters for typical tissue-specific genes, including the classic Alb1 gene, contain unmethylated CpG dinucleotides and evidence of pioneer factor interactions in embryonic stem (ES) cells. ... Full text Cite

Pioneer factors, genetic competence, and inductive signaling: Programming liver and pancreas progenitors from the endoderm

Journal Article Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology · 2008 The endoderm is a multipotent progenitor cell population in the embryo that gives rise to the liver, pancreas, and other cell types and provides paradigms for understanding cell-type specification. Studies of isolated embryo tissue cells and genetic approa ... Full text Cite

Pioneer factor interactions and unmethylated CpG dinucleotides mark silent tissue-specific enhancers in embryonic stem cells

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2007 Recent studies have suggested that, in ES cells, inactive genes encoding early developmental regulators possess bivalent histone modification domains and are therefore poised for activation. However, bivalent domains were not observed at typical tissue-spe ... Full text Cite

Global regulation of erythroid gene expression by transcription factor GATA-1

Journal Article Blood · 2004 Transcription factor GATA-1 is required for erythropoiesis, yet its full actions are unknown. We performed transcriptome analysis of G1E-ER4 cells, a GATA-1 - null erythroblast line that undergoes synchronous erythroid maturation when GATA-1 activity is re ... Full text Cite

Gene expression phenotype in heterozygous carriers of ataxia telangiectasia

Journal Article American Journal of Human Genetics · 2002 The defining characteristic of recessive diseases is the absence of a phenotype in the heterozygous carriers. Nonetheless, subtle manifestations may be detectable by new methods, such as expression profiling. Ataxia telangiectasia (AT) is a typical recessi ... Full text Cite

A resource of mapped human bacterial artificial chromosome clones

Journal Article Genome Research · 1999 To date, despite the increasing number of genomic tools, there is no repository of ordered human BAC clones that covers entire chromosomes. This project presents a resource of mapped large DNA fragments that span eight human chromosomes at ~ 1-Mb resolutio ... Full text Cite