THE T-BOX TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR BRACHYURY REGULATES EXPRESSION OF EFGFTHROUGH BINDING TO A NON-PALINDROMIC RESPONSE ELEMENT

Brachyury is a member of the T-box gene family and is required for for mation of posterior mesoderm and notochord during vertebrate developme nt. The ability of Brachyury to activate transcription is essential fo r its biological function, but nothing is known about its target genes . Here we demonstrate that Xenopus Brachyury directly regulates expres sion of eFGF by binding to an element positioned similar to 1 kb upstr eam of the eFGF transcription start site. This site comprises half of the palindromic sequence previously identified by binding site selecti on and is also present in the promoters of the human and mouse homolog ues of eFGF.