Expression of a chicken lysozyme recombinant gene is regulated by progesterone and dexamethasone after microinjection into oviduct cells.

We transferred a chicken lysozyme gene recombinant by microinjection into primary cultures of chicken oviduct cells. The recombinant gene is a fusion between the lysozyme promoter, including 1.4 kb of upstream sequences, and the coding region of the gene for SV40 T antigen (plys-T). The expression of plys-T is stimulated by the steroid hormones progesterone and dexamethasone, but not by estradiol. The number of oviduct cells expressing coinjected or separately injected control genes is not increased by steroids. A deletion mutant lacking the lysozyme sequences between -161 and +15 does not express T antigen, indicating that transcription of plys-T starts within the lysozyme promoter region. By screening different cell types we found that microinjected plys-T is expressed in chicken oviduct cells but not in chicken macrophages or fibroblasts or in rat II fibroblasts.