Structure of the rat collagen IV promoter

摘要

We have isolated a 1.6 kb clone from a rat genomic library which contains the bidirectional collagen IV promoter, flanked by exons coding for the al(IV) and ot2(IV) collagen chains. There are at least two transcription start sites within both the cd(IV) and a2(IV) collagen genes. Rat mesangial cells were transfected with chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) reporter plasmids containing segments of the promoter and 5' flanking region, in both the cxl(IV) and a2(IV) orientations. Our results suggest that transcriptional efficiency of the bidirectional promoter is more efficient in the a2(IV) direction than in the al(IV) direction.