Parker B Antin

Parker B Antin

Associate Dean, Research-Agriculture and Life Sciences
Associate Vice President for Research, Agriculture - Life and Veterinary Sciences / Cooperative Extension
Professor, Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Professor, Molecular and Cellular Biology
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-5242

Research Interest

Parker Antin is Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine in the College of Medicine, Associate Vice President for Research for the Division of Agriculture, Life and Veterinary Medicine, and Cooperative Extension, and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In his positions of Associate Vice President and Associate Dean, he is responsible for developing and implementing the research vision for the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Veterinary Medicine, with total research expenditures of approximately $65M per year. His responsibilities include oversight of research strategy and portfolio investment, grants and contracts pre award services, research intensive faculty hires and retentions, research communication and marketing, research facilities, and research compliance services. In collaboration with Division and College leadership teams, he has shared responsibilities for philanthropy, budgets and information technology. Dr. Antin is a vertebrate developmental biologist whose research is concerned with the molecular mechanisms of embryonic development. His research has been supported by NIH, NSF, NASA, USDA, and the DOE, as well as several private foundations including the American Heart Association and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, He is the Principal Investigator of CyVerse, a $115M NSF funded cyberinfrastructure project whose mission is to design, deploy and expand a national cyberinfrastructure for life sciences research, and train scientists in its use (http://cyverse.org). With 65,000 users worldwide, CyVerse enables scientists to manage and store data and experiments, access high-performance computing, and share data and results with colleagues and the public. Dr. Antin is also active nationally in the areas of science policy and funding for science. He is a past President of the Federation of Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), an umbrella science policy and advocacy organization representing 32 scientific societies and 135,000 scientists. His continued work with FASEB, along with his duties as Associate Vice President and Associate Dean for Research, and CyVerse PI, brings him frequently to Washington, DC, where he advocates for support of science and science policy positions that enhance the scientific enterprise.

Publications

Antin, P. B., Fallon, J. F., & Schoenwolf, G. C. (2004). The Chick Embryo Rules (Still)!. Developmental Dynamics, 229(3), 413-.
Zhang, W., Yatskievych, T. A., Baker, R. K., & Antin, P. B. (2004). Regulation of Hex gene expression and initial stages of avian hepatogenesis by Bmp and Fgf signaling. Developmental Biology, 268(2), 312-326.

PMID: 15063170;Abstract:

The vertebrate liver and heart arise from adjacent cell layers in the anterior lateral (AL) endoderm and mesoderm of late gastrula embryos, and the earliest stages of liver and heart development are interrelated through reciprocal tissue interactions. Although classical embryological studies performed several decades ago in chick and quail defined the timing of hepatogenic induction in birds and the important role for cardiogenic mesoderm in this process, almost nothing is known about the molecular aspects of avian liver development. Here we use in vivo and explantation assays to investigate tissue interactions and signaling pathways regulating Hex, a homeobox gene required for liver development, and the earliest stages of hepatogenesis in the chick embryo. We find that explants of late gastrula anterior lateral endoderm plus mesoderm, which have been used extensively for studies relating to heart development, also produce albumin-expressing hepatoblasts. Expression of Hex, the earliest known molecular marker for the hepatogenic endoderm, and albumin, indicative of early committed hepatoblasts, requires both autocrine Bmp signaling and a specific paracrine signal from the cardiogenic (anterior lateral) mesoderm. Endodermal expression of Fox2a, in contrast, requires the mesoderm but is independent of Bmp signaling. In vivo induction assays show that the ability of BMP2 to activate Hex expression in the endoderm is restricted to a region that is only slightly larger than the endogenous domain of Hex expression. Although Fgfs can substitute for the cardiogenic mesoderm to support the expression of Hex and albumin in the endoderm, several Fgf genes are expressed in the anterior lateral endoderm but an Fgf expressed predominantly in the mesoderm was not identified. Studies also showed that Fgf gene expression in the endoderm does not require a signal from the mesoderm. Mechanisms regulating endodermal signaling pathways activated by Fgfs may therefore be more complex than previously appreciated. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Konieczka, J. H., Drew, K., Pine, A., Belasco, K., Davey, S., Yatskievych, T. A., Bonneau, R., & Antin, P. B. (2009). BioNetBuilder2.0: Bringing systems biology to chicken and other model organisms. BMC Genomics, 10(SUPPL. 2).

PMID: 19607657;PMCID: PMC2966329;Abstract:

Background: Systems Biology research tools, such as Cytoscape, have greatly extended the reach of genomic research. By providing platforms to integrate data with molecular interaction networks, researchers can more rapidly begin interpretation of large data sets collected for a system of interest. BioNetBuilder is an open-source client-server Cytoscape plugin that automatically integrates molecular interactions from all major public interaction databases and serves them directly to the user's Cytoscape environment. Until recently however, chicken and other eukaryotic model systems had little interaction data available. Results: Version 2.0 of BioNetBuilder includes a redesigned synonyms resolution engine that enables transfer and integration of interactions across species; this engine translates between alternate gene names as well as between orthologs in multiple species. Additionally, BioNetBuilder is now implemented to be part of the Gaggle, thereby allowing seamless communication of interaction data to any software implementing the widely used Gaggle software. Using BioNetBuilder, we constructed a chicken interactome possessing 72,000 interactions among 8,140 genes directly in the Cytoscape environment. In this paper, we present a tutorial on how to do so and analysis of a specific use case. Conclusion: BioNetBuilder 2.0 provides numerous user-friendly systems biology tools that were otherwise inaccessible to researchers in chicken genomics, as well as other model systems. We provide a detailed tutorial spanning all required steps in the analysis. BioNetBuilder 2.0, the tools for maintaining its data bases, standard operating procedures for creating local copies of its back-end data bases, as well as all of the Gaggle and Cytoscape codes required, are open-source and freely available at http://err.bio.nyu.edu/cytoscape/bionetbuilder/. © 2009 Konieczka et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Antin, P., Grill, M. A., Bales, M. A., Fought, A. N., Rosburg, K. C., Munger, S. J., & Antin, P. B. (2003). Tetracycline-inducible system for regulation of skeletal muscle-specific gene expression in transgenic mice. Transgenic research, 12(1).

Tightly regulated control of over-expression is often necessary to study one aspect or time point of gene function and, in transgenesis, may help to avoid lethal effects and complications caused by ubiquitous over-expression. We have utilized the benefits of an optimized tet-on system and a modified muscle creatine kinase (MCK) promoter to generate a skeletal muscle-specific, doxycycline (Dox) controlled over-expression system in transgenic mice. A DNA construct was generated in which the codon optimized reverse tetracycline transactivator (rtTA) was placed under control of a skeletal muscle-specific version of the mouse MCK promoter. Transgenic mice containing this construct expressed rtTA almost exclusively in skeletal muscles. These mice were crossed to a second transgenic line containing a bi-directional promoter centered on a tet responder element driving both a luciferase reporter gene and a tagged gene of interest; in this case the calpain inhibitor calpastatin. Compound hemizygous mice showed high level, Dox dependent muscle-specific luciferase activity often exceeding 10,000-fold over non-muscle tissues of the same mouse. Western and immunocytochemical analysis demonstrated similar Dox dependent muscle-specific induction of the tagged calpastatin protein. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness and flexibility of the tet-on system to provide a tightly regulated over-expression system in adult skeletal muscle. The MCKrtTA transgenic lines can be combined with other transgenic responder lines for skeletal muscle-specific over-expression of any target gene of interest.

Antin, P. B., Forry-Schaudies, S., & Friedman, T. M. (1981). The effects of taxol on postmitotic myoblasts in culture. Journal of Cell Biology, 91(2 II), No. 20033.