Proximal rat prolactin promoter sequences direct optimal, pituitary cell-specific transcription.

Previous studies have shown that transferred hybrid constructs containing the PRL promoter are expressed specifically in rat pituitary (GH) cell lines. However, it is not yet clear which DNA region(s) is primarily responsible for expression directed by this promoter in pituitary cells. In the present studies we have examined the DNA sequences required for cell type-specific transcription of the rat PRL (rPRL) promoter either during transient expression in intact cells or in nuclear chromatin extracts. RNase protection and nuclear run-on transcription assays showed directly that a PRL-chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) construct containing about two kilobase-pairs of the rPRL promoter region (pPRL-CAT) is transcribed specifically in pituitary (GH3) cells. Analysis by transient expression in GH3 cells of pPRL-CAT and its 5' deletions showed that 1) deletion of sequences between positions -1957 and -958 did not significantly affect CAT activity; 2) the first 187 basepairs (bp) of the rPRL promoter directs full CAT activity; and 3) 98% of this activity is accounted for by rPRL DNA sequences between positions -187 and -113, containing two GH3 chromatin footprinting sites. Analysis in GH3 cell nuclear extracts showed that transcription of PRL-CAT constructs is unaffected by successive 5' deletions from position -1957 to -187, and that further deletion to -75 yielded only a moderate (approximately 2-fold) decrease in transcription.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)