No abstract

The potential importance of gene regulation in disease susceptibility and other inherited phenotypes has been underlined by the observation that the human genome contains fewer protein coding genes than expected. Promoter sequences are potential sources of polymorphism affecting gene expression, although to date there are no large-scale systematic studies that have determined how frequently such variants occur. We have used denaturing high performance liquid chromatography to screen the first 500 bp of the 5' flanking region of 170 opportunistically selected genes identified from the Eukaryotic Promoter Database (EPD) for common polymorphisms. Using a screening set of 16 chromosomes, single-nucleotide polymorphisms were found in approximately 35% of genes. It was attempted to clone each of these promoters into a T-vector constructed from the reporter gene vector pGL3. The relative ability of each promoter haplotype to promote transcription of the luciferase gene was tested in each of three human cell lines (HEK293, JEG and TE671) using a co-transfected SEAP-CMV plasmid as a control. The findings suggest that around a third of promoter variants may alter gene expression to a functionally relevant extent.

Of central importance to the policy debate which emerged during the late 1990s in the UK on the topic of 'food deserts' were the causes of the perceived worsening access to food retail provision in certain poor neighbourhoods of British cities. The 1980s/early 1990s era of intense food superstore development on edge-of-city sites was seen as having unevenly stripped food retailing out of parts of those cities, or having repositioned that provision downwards in range and quality terms. By the late 1990s, however, tightened land-use planning regulation had begun significantly to impact the development programmes of the major food retailers and those retailers increasingly came to adopt an urban regeneration agenda to drive forwards the new store development vital to their corporate growth. Simultaneously, issues of social exclusion rose to prominence on the political agenda and 'tackling social exclusion' began to be promoted as a possible new criterion for retail planning policy in the UK. In this paper, we explore this nexus of interest in urban regeneration and social inclusion. Using the example of a major retail development in the deprived area of Seacroft, Leeds, we outline the characteristics of the increasingly important regeneration partnerships involving retailers, local authorities, government agencies and community groups. We ask to what extent such partnerships can be dismissed merely as 'clever devices to get stores built and passed by planners' and discuss the implications for retail planning policy of attempts to address both the social exclusion and public health agendas of deprived and poorly served areas of British cities.

No abstract