STRUCTURE, ORGANIZATION, AND EXPRESSION OF THE RAT CARDIAC MYOSIN LIGHT CHAIN-2 GENE - IDENTIFICATION OF A 250-BASE PAIR FRAGMENT WHICH CONFERS CARDIAC-SPECIFIC EXPRESSION

  • 25 October 1989
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 264  (30) , 18142-18148
Abstract
The present study characterized the structure, organization, and expression of the rat cardiac myosin light chain (MLC)-2 gene. The rat cardiac MLC-2 gene has seven exons which display complete conservation with the exon structure of the rat fast twitch skeletal MLC-2 gene. A 250-base pair (bp) sequence of the 5''-flanking region contains CArG motifs and additional cis elements, each greater than 10 bp in length, which were conserved in sequence and relative position with the chick cardiac MLC-2 gene. A series of MLC-2/luciferase fusion genes consisting of nested 5'' deletions of the MLC-2 5''-flanking region were constructed and transfected into primary neonatal rat myocardial cells and a non-myocardial cell line (CV-1), demonstrating that this 250 bp of the MLC-2 5''-flanking region was sufficient to confer cardiac specific expression on a luciferas reporter gene. This study suggests the presence of important proximal regulatory sequences in the MLC-2 5''-flanking region which are capable of directing the cardiac specific expression of the rat cardiac myosin light chain-2 gene.