NUCLEIC ACIDS, PROTEIN SYNTHESIS, AND MOLECULAR GENETICS
Functional Interactions between the Estrogen Receptor and the Transcription Activator Sp1 Regulate the Estrogen-dependent Transcriptional Activity of the Vitellogenin A1 ioPromoter*

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Two distinct, TATA box-containing promoters regulate the transcriptional activity of the Xenopusvitellogenin A1 gene. These two promoters are of different strength and are separated by 1.8 kilobase pairs of untranslated sequence. Estrogen receptor (ER) and its ligand, 17β-estradiol, induce the activity of both promoters. The estrogen response elements (EREs) are located proximal to the downstream i promoter while no ERE-like sequences have been identified in the vicinity of the upstreamio promoter. We show here, that transcriptional activity of the upstream io promoter is Sp1-dependent. Moreover, we demonstrate that estrogen inducibility of theio promoter results from functional interactions between the io bound Sp1 and the ER bound at the proximity ofi. Functional interactions between Sp1 and ER do not require the presence of a TATA box for transcriptional activation, as is demonstrated using the acyl-CoA oxidase promoter. The relative positions that ER and Sp1 occupy with respect to the initiation site determines whether these two transcription activators can synergize for transcription initiation.

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*

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Etat de Vaud.The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. The article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Supported by a fellowship from the CNPq, Brazilian Agency. Present address: Dept. de Biologia Cellular e Genetica-CB-UFRN, Natal, RN CEP 59015-310, Brazil.

Supported by Ciba-Geigy.