Structure of the gene for human uracil-DNA glycosylase and analysis of the promoter function.

The gene for human uracil-DNA glycosylase (UNG) contains 4 exons and has an approximate size of 13 kb. The promoter is very GC rich and lacks a TATA box. Nested deletions of the promoter demonstrated that two SP1 elements and a putative c-MYC element proximal to the transcription initiation region were sufficient to support some 27% of the promoter activity, while a clone that in addition contained the elements E2F/SP1/CCAAT increased expression to almost 90% of the full-length construct. A region upstream of these elements appears to exert a negative control function.