TY - JOUR TI - Regulation of the mouse alfaB-crystallin and MKBP/HspB2 promoter activities by shared and gene specific intergenic elements: the importance of context dependency AU - Swamynathan, ShivalingappaK. AU - Piatigorsky, Joram T2 - The International Journal of Developmental Biology AB - The closely linked (863 bp), divergently arranged mouse myotonic dystrophy kinase binding protein (Mkbp)/HspB2 and small heat shock protein (shsp)/alfaB-crystallin genes have different patterns of tissue-specific expression. We showed previously that an intergenic enhancing region (-436/-257 relative to alfaB-crystallin transcription start site) selectively activates the alfaB-crystallin promoter in an orientation-dependent manner (Swamynathan, S.K. and J. Piatigorsky 2002. J. Biol. Chem. 277:49700-6). Here we show that cis-elements alfaBE1 (-420/-396) and alfaBE3 (-320/-300) functionally interact with glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and Sp1, respectively, both in vitro and in vivo. alfaBE1:GR regulates both the HspB2 and alfaB-crystallin promoters, while alfaBE3:Sp1 selectively regulates the alfaB-crystallin promoter, as judged by mutagenesis and co-transfection tests. Enhancer blocking assays indicate that the -836/-622 fragment can act as a negative regulator in transfection tests, raising the possibility that it contributes to the differential expression of the proximal HspB2 promoter and distal alfaB-crystallin promoter. Finally, experiments utilizing transiently transfected cells and transgenic mice show that two conserved E-box elements (-726/-721 and -702/-697) bind nuclear proteins and differentially regulate the HspB2 and alfaB-crystallin promoters in a tissue-specific manner. Taken together, our results indicate that the linked, differentially expressed HspB2 and alfaB-crystallin genes have evolved shared and promoter-preferred cis-control elements within the intergenic sequence. The context-dependency of cis-elements provides multiple opportunities for evolutionary novelty by small sequence changes. PY - 2007 DO - 10.1387/ijdb.072302ss VL - 51 IS - 8 SP - 689 EP - 700 J2 - Int. J. Dev. Biol. LA - en SN - 0214-6282 SN - 1696-3547 UR - https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/072302ss Y2 - 2024/11/05/19:26:24 ER -