Platelet-activating factor (PAF) positively auto-regulates the expression of human PAF receptor transcript 1 (leukocyte-type) through NF-kappa B.

The human platelet-activating factor receptor (PAFR) gene is transcribed by two distinct promoters (promoter 1 and promoter 2) to generate two transcripts (designated as PAFR transcript 1 and PAFR transcript 2), though their open reading frames are identical. By primer extension analysis to discriminate two transcripts, we found that the levels of PAFR transcript 1 (leukocyte-type), but not PAFR transcript 2 (tissue-type), are upregulated by PAF as well as by 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) in the human stomach cancer cell line (JR-St cells) which expresses both functional PAFR transcript 1 and PAFR transcript 2 endogenously. Functional analysis of the promoter 1 with a transient expression assay using chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene as a reporter showed that both PAF and TPA activated the promoter 1 but not the deleted promoter lacking the three consensus binding sites for NF-kappa B located from -571 bp to -459 bp. These findings suggest a molecular mechanism of positive regulation of PAFR gene expression by PAF through NF-kappa B, possibly by a phosphorylation reaction involving protein kinase C by PAF.