Cloning of cardiac, kidney, and brain promoters of the feline ncx1 gene.

The Na+-Ca2+ exchanger (NCX1) plays a major role in calcium efflux and therefore in the control and regulation of intracellular calcium in the heart. The exchanger has been shown to be regulated at several levels including transcription. NCX1 mRNA levels are up-regulated in both cardiac hypertrophy and failure. In this work, the 5'-end of the ncx1 gene has been cloned to study the mechanisms that mediate hypertrophic stimulation and cardiac expression. The feline ncx1 gene has three exons that encode 5'-untranslated sequences that are under the control of three tissue-specific promoters. The cardiac promoter drives expression in cardiocytes, but not in mouse L cells. Although it contains at least one enhancer (-2000 to -1250 base pairs (bp)) and one or more negative elements (-1250 to -250 bp), a minimum promoter (-250 to +200 bp) is sufficient for cardiac expression and alpha-adrenergic stimulation.