COMPARISON OF HUMAN AND XENOPUS GATA-2 PROMOTERS

GATA proteins comprise a family of transcription factors that are requ ired for appropriate development of hematopoietic lineages. In order t o understand the transcriptional regulation of GATA genes, we have clo ned the human GATA-2 gene and identified and characterized its promote r. Comparison with the Xenopus GATA-2 promoter demonstrates highly con served CCAAT box elements, which are essential for appropriate Xenopus expression. Unlike the Xenopus gene, the human GATA-2 gene lacks GATA binding motifs within the first 800 bp of 5' flanking sequence. In ad dition, the human GATA-2 promoter has two highly conserved ets sites t hat resemble the binding site for a recently described ets repressor f actor, ERF. These conserved DNA sequence motifs provide strong candida te regions for the regulation of GATA-2.