| Title: | Common promoter elements in odorant and vomeronasal receptor genes |
| Author(s): | Michaloski JS; Galante PA; Nagai MH; Armelin-Correa L; Chien MS; Matsunami H; Malnic B; |
| Address: | "Departamento de Bioquimica, Instituto de Quimica, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil" |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0029065 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1932-6203 (Electronic) 1932-6203 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "In mammals, odorants and pheromones are detected by hundreds of odorant receptors (ORs) and vomeronasal receptors (V1Rs and V2Rs) expressed by sensory neurons that are respectively located in the main olfactory epithelium and in the vomeronasal organ. Even though these two olfactory systems are functionally and anatomically separate, their sensory neurons show a common mechanism of receptor gene regulation: each neuron expresses a single receptor gene from a single allele. The mechanisms underlying OR and VR gene expression remain unclear. Here we investigated if OR and V1R genes share common sequences in their promoter regions.We conducted a comparative analysis of promoter regions of 39 mouse V1R genes and found motifs that are common to a large number of promoters. We then searched mouse OR promoter regions for motifs that resemble the ones found in the V1R promoters. We identified motifs that are present in both the V1R and OR promoter regions. Some of these motifs correspond to the known O/E like binding sites while others resemble binding sites for transcriptional repressors. We show that one of these motifs specifically interacts with proteins extracted from both nuclei from olfactory and vomeronasal neurons. Our study is the first to identify motifs that resemble binding sites for repressors in the promoters of OR and V1R genes. Analysis of these motifs and of the proteins that bind to these motifs should reveal important aspects of the mechanisms of OR/V1R gene regulation" |
| Keywords: | "Amino Acid Sequence Animals DNA, Complementary Gene Expression Mice Molecular Sequence Data Neurons/metabolism *Promoter Regions, Genetic Receptors, Odorant/*genetics Sequence Homology, Amino Acid Vomeronasal Organ/*metabolism;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineMichaloski, Jussara S Galante, Pedro A F Nagai, Maira H Armelin-Correa, Lucia Chien, Ming-Shan Matsunami, Hiroaki Malnic, Bettina eng R01 DC005782/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS/ R01 DC010857/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS/ T32 GM007754/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2012/01/05 PLoS One. 2011; 6(12):e29065. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029065. Epub 2011 Dec 28" |
