Redundant Domains Contribute to the Transcriptional Activity of the Thyroid Transcription Factor 1 (*)
- Mario De Felice(1)(2),
- Giuseppe Damante(3),
- Mariastella Zannini(1),
- Helen Francis-Lang(1)(§) and
- Roberto Di Lauro(1)(¶)
- From the (1) Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa comunale, 80121 Napoli, the
- (2) Istituto Pluridisciplinare di Patologia Generale, Facoltà di Medicina, Università di Messina, 98100 Messina, and the
- (3) Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biomediche, 33100 Udine, Italy 33100
- ¶ To whom correspondence should be addressed: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, 80121 Naples, Italy. Tel.: 39-81-5833278; Fax: 39-81-5833285.
Abstract
The thyroid transcription factor 1 (TTF-1) is a homeodomain-containing protein implicated in the activation of thyroid-specific gene expression. Here we report that TTF-1 is capable of activating transcription from thyroglobulin and, to a lesser extent, thyroperoxidase gene promoters in nonthyroid cells. Full transcriptional activation of the thyroglobulin promoter by TTF-1 requires the presence of at least two TTF-1 binding sites. TTF-1 activates transcription via two functionally redundant transcriptional activation domains that as suggested by competition experiments, could use a common intermediary factor.
Footnotes
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↵* This work was supported by grants from the Progetto finalizzato Applicazioni Cliniche della Ricerca Oncologica of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro, and the Commission of the European Communities (BIO2 CT 930454). 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.
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↵1 The abbreviations used are:
- TTF
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thyroid transcription factor
- CAT
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chloramphenicol acetyltransferase
- Tg
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thyroglobulin
- TPO
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thyroperoxidase.
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↵2 R. Lonigro, M. DeFelice, E. Biffali, P. E. Macchie, G. Demente, C. Astene, and R. DiLauro, submitted for publication.
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↵3 G. Cobellis, M. De Felice, and R. Di Lauro, unpublished results.
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- Received July 18, 1995.
- © 1995 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.
