Open AccessCharacterization of a functional promoter for the human retinoic acid receptor-alpha (hRAR-α)
Author(s) -
Nigel J. Brand,
Martin Petkovich,
Pierre Chambon
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
nucleic acids research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 9.008
H-Index - 537
eISSN - 1362-4954
pISSN - 0305-1048
DOI - 10.1093/nar/18.23.6799
Subject(s) - biology , microbiology and biotechnology , promoter , zinc finger , enhancer , retinoic acid , transcription factor , transcription (linguistics) , caat box , retinoic acid receptor alpha , reporter gene , tata box , retinoic acid receptor , response element , gene , genetics , gene expression , linguistics , philosophy
The three retinoic acid receptors RAR-alpha, beta and gamma are thought to mediate the effects of RA in vivo. We have determined here the exon organisation in the 5' region of the human RAR-alpha (hRAR-alpha) gene, and have identified its promoter. This promoter drives the expression of promoterless beta-globin or CAT reporter genes when transfected into HeLa, Cos-1 or mouse embryonal carcinoma (EC) P19.6 cells in culture. There are no TATA or CCAAT-box elements in this promoter, which appears to belong to the class of promoters made up of an initiator element preceded by several putative binding sites for the transcription factor Sp1. In addition, the hRAR-alpha promoter region contains a number of sequences that are similar to known enhancer elements. Notably, the hRAR-alpha promoter contains a sequence identical to a binding site for the Krox-20 transcription factors, a zinc finger-containing protein which is thought to play a role in the early development of the mouse central nervous system.