A Mammalian Helix-Loop-Helix Factor Structurally Related to the Product of Drosophila Proneural Gene atonal Is a Positive Transcriptional Regulator Expressed in the Developing Nervous System(*)
- Chihiro Akazawa(§),
- Makoto Ishibashi(1),
- Chikara Shimizu,
- Shigetada Nakanishi and
- Ryoichiro Kageyama(¶)
- From the (1) Institute for Immunology and the
- Department of Anatomy, Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto 606, Japan
- ¶ To whom correspondence should be addressed: Inst. for Immunology, Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, Yoshida, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606, Japan. Tel.: 81-75-753-4438; Fax: 81-75-753-4404.
Abstract
We report the molecular characterization of a mouse basic helix-loop-helix factor, designated MATH-1, structurally related to the product of the Drosophila proneural gene atonal. MATH-1 mRNA is first detected in the cranial ganglions and the dorsal part of the central nervous system on embryonic day 9.5 (E9.5). From E10.5 onward, prominent expression of MATH-1 continues in the dorsal part of the central nervous system but becomes restricted to the external granular layer of the cerebellum by E18 and is undetectable in the adult nervous system. MATH-1 activates E box-dependent transcription in collaboration with E47, but the activity is completely antagonized by the negative regulator of neurogenesis HES-1. These results suggest that MATH-1 may be a target of HES-1 and play a role in the differentiation of subsets of neural cells by activating E box-dependent transcription.
Footnotes
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↵* This work was supported by research grants from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture of Japan, the Sankyo Foundation, the Yamanouchi Foundation, and the Inamori Foundation. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore by hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
The nucleotide sequence reported in this paper has been submitted to the GSDB, DDBJ, EMBL, and NCBI Data Banks with accession number D43694.
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↵1 The abbreviations used are:
- CNS
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central nervous system
- HLH
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helix-loop-helix
- bHLH
-
basic HLH
- E
-
embryonic day
- P
-
postnatal day
- PCR
-
polymerase chain reaction.
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↵2C. Akazawa, M. Ishibashi, C. Shimizu, S. Nakanishi, and R. Kageyama, unpublished data.
- © 1995 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.
