Renin, Genes, and Beyond

Dr Lewis Kitchener Dahl, the Dahl Rats, and the “Inconvenient Truth” About the Genetics of Hypertension

“…Due to the fact that my entire research career is based on the Dahl rats, which were generated by Dr. Lewis Dahl, I was quite familiar with Dr. Dahl’s scientific contributions not just through his articles, but through conversations with my mentor, Dr. John Paul Rapp, who was technically the ‘scientific successor’ of Dr. Dahl as he ‘inherited’ the Dahl rats prior to Dr. Dahl’s sad demise in 1975. An additional source of brief information preceding the death of Dr. Dahl is presented in an article by Dr. Brian J. Morris 1 , the 2010 Dahl Award honoree. Thus, in preparing for this lecture it was obvious to me that the scientific community barely knows Dr. Dahl as a person.…”

Renin, Genes, MicroRNAs, and Renal Mechanisms Involved in Hypertension

“…[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] In the present review, I will first provide a brief summary of my earlier contributions to the hypertension field, these having been addressed in more detail in a review arising from my Lewis K. Dahl Memorial Lecture in 2010. 20 I will then review my more recent research, which has involved the determination of alterations in gene expression at the transcriptome-wide level in hypertension and the pivotal mechanistic insights this work has provided, especially an intriguing mechanism controlling intrarenal renin. This finding was the hitherto unsuspected involvement of a microRNA coexpressed with renin in the renal collecting duct, a discovery that might at long last point to how renin could be responsible for the onset or progression of hypertension.…”