CTF NF-1 BINDS THE STAGE SELECTOR ELEMENT OF THE HUMAN GAMMA-GLOBIN GENE PROMOTER/

The human gamma-globin gene undergoes to a transcriptional switch duri ng development, being expressed in the fetus and silenced at birth. It has been proposed that the sequence centered at -50 of the gamma-glob in promoter contains a stage selector element (SSE) involved in the ga mma- to beta-globin switching. The presence of the SSE confers prefere ntial functional interactions of the promoter with the locus control r egion (LCR) in the fetal liver. It has been shown that two factors bin d the gamma-globin SSE: Sp1 and the stage selector protein (SSP). Here we show that also the ubiquitous transcription factor CTF/NF-1 binds to the -53 to -35 element of the human gamma-globin promoter and its s pecificity is not influenced by flanking sequences. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.