STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE MOUSE ELK1 GENE

In the ets gene family of transcription factors, elk1 belongs to the s ubfamily of Ternary Complex Factors (TCFs) which bind to the Serum Res ponse Element (SRE) in conjunction with a dimer of Serum Response Fact ors (SRFs). In this communication we report the isolation of cDNAs fro m the mouse elk1 gene, containing the full coding sequence homologous (87% identical) to the human gene, and the structure and organization of 22 kb of the mouse elk1 locus. The coding sequence is spread throug h 5 exons (numbered 1 to 5): exons 1 to 4 range from 102 bp to 447 bp and exon 5 is at least 620 bp. Exon 0 was not found in the 8.5 kb sequ ence upstream of exon 1. The intron between exons 1 and 2 is 4 kb long and the 3 other introns are less than 500 bp long. This information w ill be useful to engineer targeted mutations of this gene in mice and to determine the genomic structure of the other TCF genes.