GENE STRUCTURE AND PROMOTER FOR ADH3 ENCODING MOUSE CLASS-IV ALCOHOL-DEHYDROGENASE (RETINOL DEHYDROGENASE)

Class IV alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) has been shown to function in vit ro as a retinol dehydrogenase catalyzing the synthesis of retinoic aci d, a pleiotropic gene regulator. To enable genetic studies on the func tion of this enzyme and regulation of its gene, we have screened a gen omic library and isolated the mouse class IV ADH gene (Adh3). The comp lete mouse class IV ADH coding region was found in nine exons spanning a 14-kb region. Primer extension analysis was used to map the transcr iption initiation site to a position lying 30 bp upstream of the ATG t ranslation start codon. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the promoter r egion indicated an absence of both TATA-box and GC-box sequences; this distinguishes it from the promoters for class I, II, and III ADH gene s. Sequence comparison of the mouse and human class IV ADH promoters i ndicated that they share a conserved region located 125-145 bp upstrea m of the coding region containing adjacent sequences matching the cons ensus binding sites for transcription factors AP-1 and C/EBP. (C) 1997 Academic Press.