Menet Lab
Department of Biology, Texas A&M University
Regulation of Rhythmic Gene Expression in Mammals
Most organisms from bacteria to humans exhibit endogenous 24-hours (circadian) rhythms . Best exemplified by the sleep/wake cycle, these rhythms are remarkably widespread and include hormonal, metabolic, physiological and behavioral oscillations. These rhythms have a remarkable adaptive value as they enable most biological functions to perform optimally at the most appropriate time of the day.
Circadian rhythms are generated by “molecular clocks” that drive the rhythmic expression of thousands of genes throughout the body. The wide impact of rhythmic gene expression on the regulation of biological functions is underscored by the surprisingly large number of pathologies developed by organisms having a genetically or environmentally disrupted clock. In addition to
being arrhythmic, they indeed develop pathologies as diverse as mania-like behaviors, learning and memory defects, depression, drug addiction, insomnia, metabolic diseases, arthropathy, hematopoiesis defects and cancers.
Research in the Menet lab aims at characterizing how circadian clocks and clock genes regulate gene expression to provide insights into how and why clock dysfunction leads to a wide spectra of pathologies. To this end, we are using a wide-range of molecular, biochemical and physiological approaches to investigate the circadian clock function at the genome-wide level in mouse. Our current projects focus more particularly on:
1) how clock genes rhythmically regulate the chromatin environment,
2) how rhythmic food intake contributes to driving rhythmic gene expression,
3) how alternative polyadenylation, i.e., a mechanism that generates RNAs with different 3' ends, shapes cycling transcriptomes.
July 2026: The lab just release a new paper: "mTOR signaling contributes to system-driven rhythmic gene expression in mouse liver". Science Advances. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aec0131
July 2026: The Menet Lab collaborated with the Jiang Lab to publish “Single-cell Multiomic and Spatiotemporal Dissection of the Liver Circadian Clock.” DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/gpbjnl/qzag050
July 2026: Chanté won the Roozbeh Arienpour Award for Excellence in Research from the Department of Biology. Congrats Chanté!
June 2026: Abhinav joins the lab as a visiting scholar. Welcome Abhinav!
May 2026: Chanté received the American Physiological society excellence award for graduate students and postdoctoral trainees from the SRBR. Bravo Chanté!
News
Latest Publications
Sahasrabudhe A, Guy CR, Jacq A, Ho C‑W, Greenwell BJ, Menet JS. mTOR signaling contributes to system-driven rhythmic gene expression in mouse liver. Science Advances. 2026;12:eaec0131. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aec0131
Chun Yip Tong, Changhao Li, Audrey Jacq, Xinyu Y Nie, Chanté R Guy, Ju Hyun Suh, Raymond K W Wong, Christine Merlin, Jerome S Menet, Yuchao Jiang, Single-cell Multiomic and Spatiotemporal Dissection of the Liver Circadian Clock, Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics, 2026;, qzag050, https://doi.org/10.1093/gpbjnl/qzag050
Nie, X.Y. and Menet, J.S. (2026), Interplay between circadian and other transcription factors—Implications for cycling transcriptome reprogramming. FEBS Lett, 600: 847-861. https://doi.org/10.1002/1873-3468.70232