Nucleic Acids Research, 1989, Vol. 17, No. 4 1521-1536
© 1989
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY |
Dual enhancer activities of the cyclic-AMP responsive element with cell type and promoter specificity
Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, Tsukuba Life Science Center, The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan
Received November 22, 1988. Accepted January 3, 1989.
The role of the cyclic-AMP (cAMP) responsive element (CRE) in eukaryotic gene transcription was investigated in several cell lines transfected by constructs containing the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene linked to the three different promoters, simian virus(SV) 40, human c-Ha-ras-1, or chicken ß-actin promoter, with or without CRE. CRE had inducible enhancer activity only when it was linked to the SV40 promoter and in a few cell lines such as PC12. CRE functioned as a constitutive enhancer with the human c-Ha-ras-1 promoter in all cell lines examined. CRE also had constitutive enhancer activity when it was linked to the chickenß-actin promoter, but this activity was observed only in KB, HeLa, and A431 cells. The different types of enhancer activities of CRE depending on the cell and promoter may be caused by interaction with different trans-acting factors that were demonstrated by gel retardation analyses.