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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 283, Issue 14, 8976-8983, April 4, 2008

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Defining the Functional Boundaries of the Gata2 Locus by Rescue with a Linked Bacterial Artificial Chromosome Transgene^*

William Brandt¹, Melin Khandekar¹, Norio Suzuki, Masayuki Yamamoto, Kim-Chew Lim, and James Douglas Engel²

From the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2200 and the Department of Medical Biochemistry, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai 980-8575, Japan

Transcription factor GATA-2 is vital for both hematopoietic progenitor cell function and urogenital patterning. Transgenic mapping studies have shown that the hematopoietic and urogenital enhancers are located hundreds of kbp 5' and 3' to the Gata2 structural gene, and both are vital for embryonic development. Because the size of mammalian genes, including all of their associated regulatory elements, can exceed a megabase, transgenic complementation in mice has, in specific instances, proven to be a formidable hurdle. After incorporating the Gata2 structural gene as well as the distant hematopoietic and urogenital enhancers into a single, contiguous piece of DNA by fusing two bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) into one, we formally tested the hypothesis that the functional boundaries of this locus are contained within this contiguous genomic span. We show that two independent lines of transgenic mice bearing a multicopy 413-kbp-linked Gata2 BAC transgene (bearing sequences from –187 to +226 kbp of the locus) are able to fully rescue Gata2 null mutant embryonic lethality and that the rescued animals behave and reproduce normally. Surprisingly, the linked BAC confers expression in the ureteric epithelium, whereas sequences within any of the overlapping parental BACs and a yeast artificial chromosome that were originally tested do not, and thus these experiments also define a novel synthetic enhancer activity that has not been previously described. These genetic complementation studies define the required outer limits of the Gata2 locus and formally demonstrate that enhancers lying beyond those boundaries are not necessary for Gata2-regulated viability or fecundity.

Received for publication, November 14, 2007 , and in revised form, January 17, 2007.

^* This work was supported by Research Grant GM28896 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (to J. D. E.), by NIH Medical Scientist Training Program Fellowship GM08152 to Northwestern University (to M. K.), and by Cell and Molecular Biology Training Grant GM07315 to the University of Michigan (to W. B.). The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Tables S1 and S2.

¹ Both authors contributed equally to this work.

² To whom correspondence should be addressed: 3071 BSRB, 109 Zina Pitcher Place, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2200. Tel.: 734-615-7509; Fax: 734-615-8500; E-mail: engel{at}umich.edu.

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