ABSTRACT
Recent advances in molecular biology techniques have greatly overcome this handicap and made investigations of gene expression in the pineal more assessable. This chapter focuses on recent advances in pineal molecular biology and on the emerging similarity that exists between pinealocytes and retinal photoreceptor cells. A molecular biology approach to characterizing the expression and function of these cassette proteins focuses on the identification and analysis of mRNAs, encoding relevant proteins of retina and pineal. Insight into the clock mechanism is moving slowly forward and, with advances in molecular biology, individual mRNAs and genes encoding each enzyme in melatonin pathway can be examined for unique DNA-regulatory elements. The genetic mechanisms that control the cell-specific expression and transcriptional regulation of hydroxyindole-O-methyltransferase (HIOMT) can be examined in greater detail and it can be resolved whether environmental factors influence the expression and transcription of HIOMT.
