Stimulation of SV40 DNA replication by the human c-myc enhancer

In earlier studies we had shown that a transcriptional enhancer sequence exists about 2 kb upstream of the human c-myc gene. The core sequence necessary for enhancer activity was defined therein as a 21 bp nucleotide element, which also showed autonomous replicating activity [EMBO J. (1988) 7, 3135-3142; EMBO J. (1989) 8, 4273-4279]. Recently, several reports have substantiated the notion that transcription and replication can be concertedly regulated in a larger number of cases than expected. In this report, we took the simian virus 40 (SV 40) ori/promoter as a model system. The SV40 enhancer is known to enhance transcription from its ori/promoter, but to reduce its replication (probably due to a negative feedback). The SV40 enhancer was replaced by the c-myc enhancer core in order to see its effect upon SV40 DNA replication and transcription. The results showed that besides stimulating transcription, the c-myc enhancer promoted SV40 DNA replication in monkey CosI cells. Stimulation was only observed when the c-myc enhancer was inserted in the 'up-to-down' orientation to the SV40 promoter. The promoting function of the c-myc enhancer on DNA replication correlated with the transcriptional activation function, as determined by systematic point mutations introduced within the 21 bp core sequence.