The GATA-4 transcription factor transactivates the cardiac muscle-specific troponin C promoter-enhancer in nonmuscle cells.

The unique contractile phenotype of cardiac myocytes is determined by the expression of a set of cardiac muscle-specific genes. By analogy to other mammalian developmental systems, it is likely that the coordinate expression of cardiac genes is controlled by lineage-specific transcription factors that interact with promoter and enhancer elements in the transcriptional regulatory regions of these genes. Although previous reports have identified several cardiac muscle-specific transcriptional elements, relatively little is known about the lineage-specific transcription factors that regulate these elements. In this report, we demonstrate that the slow/cardiac muscle-specific troponin C (cTnC) enhancer contains a specific binding site for the lineage-restricted zinc finger transcription factor GATA-4. This GATA-4-binding site is required for enhancer activity in primary cardiac myocytes. Moreover, the cTnC enhancer can be transactivated by overexpression of GATA-4 in non-cardiac muscle cells such as NIH 3T3 cells. In situ hybridization studies demonstrate that GATA-4 and cTnC have overlapping patterns of expression in the hearts of postimplantation mouse embryos and that GATA-4 gene expression precedes cTnC expression. Indirect immunofluorescence reveals GATA-4 expression in cultured cardiac myocytes from neonatal rats. Taken together, these results are consistent with a model in which GATA-4 functions to direct tissue-specific gene expression during mammalian cardiac development.