A Novel Family of Developmentally Regulated Mammalian Transcription Factors Containing the TEA/ATTS DNA Binding Domain

doi:10.1074/jbc.271.36.21775

A Novel Family of Developmentally Regulated Mammalian Transcription Factors Containing the TEA/ATTS DNA Binding Domain*

From the ^‡ Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, CNRS/INSERM/ULP, Collège de France, B.P. 163-67404 Illkirch Cédex, France and the
^¶ Laboratoire de Biologie Moléculaire et de Genie Génétique, Institut de Chimie-B6, Université de Liège, B-4000 Sart-Tilman, Belgium

** To whom correspondence should be addressed: Tel.: 33 88 65 34 40 (45); Fax: 33 88 65 32 01; E-mail: irwin{at}titus.u-strasbg.fr.

↵^∥ Present address: The Norris Cancer Center, 1441 Eastlake Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033-0800.

Abstract

We describe the molecular cloning of two novel human and murine transcription factors containing the TEA/ATTS DNA binding domain and related to transcriptional enhancer factor-1 (TEF-1). These factors bind to the consensus TEA/ATTS cognate binding site exemplified by the GT-IIC and Sph enhansons of the SV40 enhancer but differ in their ability to bind cooperatively to tandemly repeated sites. The human TEFs are differentially expressed in cultured cell lines and the mouse (m)TEFs are differentially expressed in embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues in early post-implantation embryos. Strikingly, at later stages of embryogenesis, mTEF-3 is specifically expressed in skeletal muscle precursors, whereas mTEF-1 is expressed not only in developing skeletal muscle but also in the myocardium. Together with previous data, these results point to important, partially redundant, roles for these TEF proteins in myogenesis and cardiogenesis. In addition, mTEF-1 is strongly coexpressed with mTEF-4 in mitotic neuroblasts, while accentuated mTEF-4 expression is also observed in the gut and the nephrogenic region of the kidney. These observations suggest additional roles for the TEF proteins in central nervous system development and organogenesis.

Footnotes

↵^§ Supported by short-term fellowships from the EMBO, the Human Science Frontier Organisation, and a long-term fellowship from the Association pour la Recherche contre le Cancer (A.R.C.).
↵* This work was supported by Grants PAI P3-042 and PAI P3-044, from the Services Féderaux des Affaires Scientifiques, Techniques, et Culturelles (Belgium), the CNRS, the INSERM, the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Régional, the Ministère de la Recherche et de la Technologie, the Association pour la Recherche contre le Cancer, and the Collège de France. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. The article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank™/EMBL Data Bank with accession number(s) X94438[GenBank], X94441[GenBank], X94440[GenBank], X94442[GenBank].
↵¹ The abbreviations used are:

TEF-1

transcriptional enhancer factor-1

dpc

days post-coitum

RT

reverse transcription

PCR

polymerase chain reaction

EMSA

electrophoretic mobility shift assays

CNS

central nervous system

ORF

open reading frame

DBD

DNA binding domain

h

human

m

murine.
↵²P. Jacquemin, J.-J. Hwang, J. A. Martial, P. Dollé, and I. Davidson, unpublished data.
- Received April 24, 1996.
- Revision received June 14, 1996.