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Mol. Cell. Biol., 04 1997, 1966-1976, Vol 17, No. 4
CJ Fry, JE Slansky and PJ Farnham
Activity of the dihydrofolate reductase (dhfr) promoter increases at the
G1-S-phase boundary of the cell cycle. Mutations that abolish protein
binding to an E2F element in the dhfr promoter also abolish the G1-S-phase
increase in dhfr transcription, indicating that transcriptional regulation
is mediated by the E2F family of proteins. To investigate the mechanism by
which E2F regulates dhfr transcription, we moved the E2F element upstream
and downstream of its natural position in the promoter. We found that the
E2F element confers growth regulation to the dhfr promoter only when it is
proximal to the transcription start site. Using a heterologous E2F element,
we showed that position-dependent regulation is a property that is promoter
specific, not E2F element specific. We demonstrated that E2F-mediated
growth regulation of dhfr transcription requires activation of the dhfr
promoter in S phase and that the C-terminal activation domains of E2F1,
E2F4, and E2F5, when fused to the Gal4 DNA binding domain, are sufficient
to specify position-dependent activation. To further investigate the role
of activation in dhfr regulation, we tested other transactivation domains
for their ability to activate the dhfr promoter. We found that the
N-terminal transactivation domain of VP16 cannot activate the dhfr
promoter. We propose that, unlike other E2F- regulated promoters, robust
transcription from the dhfr promoter requires an E2F transactivation domain
close to the transcription start site.
Copyright © 1997, American Society for Microbiology
Position-dependent transcriptional regulation of the murine dihydrofolate reductase promoter by the E2F transactivation domain
McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison 53706, USA.
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