THE GENES ENCODING MAMMALIAN CHAPERONIN-60 AND CHAPERONIN-10 ARE LINKED HEAD-TO-HEAD AND SHARE A BIDIRECTIONAL PROMOTER

Chaperonins are a class of stress-inducible molecular chaperones invol ved in protein folding. We report the cloning, sequencing and characte risation of the rat mitochondrial chaperonin 60 and chaperonin 10 gene s. The two genes are arranged in a head-to-head configuration and toge ther comprise 14 kb and contain 14 introns. The genes are linked toget her by a region of approximately 280 bp, which constitutes a bidirecti onal promoter and includes a common heat-shock element. Insertion of t he shared promoter region between two reporter genes is sufficient to drive their expression under both constitutive and heat-shock conditio ns. The arrangement of the mammalian chaperonin genes suggests the pot ential to provide the coordinated regulation of their products in a ma nner that is mechanistically distinct from, yet conceptually similar t o, that employed by the bacterial chaperonin (groE) operon. (C) 1997 E lsevier Science B.V.