Erythroid expression and DNAaseI-hypersensitive sites of the carbonic anhydrase 1 gene

The carbonic anhydrase 1 gene is expressed in adult human and mouse erythroid cells and colon epithelia from two distinct promoters. We have explored the erythroid promoter for cis-acting sequences involved in transcription using DNAaseI as a probe. Two DNAaseI-hypersensitive sites (DHS-1 and DHS-2) have been identified in the distal erythroid promoter in CA1-expressing erythroleukaemic cells. These sites are present at low levels in K562 cells, which have a foetal/embryonic phenotype and do not express CA1. DHS-1 and DHS-2 are not present in non-erythroid cells, including colon cells, which express CA1 from the proximal colon promoter. DHS-1 and DHS-2 were also generated in an heterologous CA1 gene containing 5 kb of erythroid promoter sequence after transfection into erythroid cells, including K562 cells. These transfection studies showed that both this fragment, and an abbreviated 817 bp promoter fragment which contains only DHS-1, were sufficient to confer erythroid-specific expression to a reporter gene. These promoters were active in cell lines expressing CA1 and in K562 cells. This latter observation implies that a developmental repressor factor is both present in K562 cells and binds to a cis-acting sequence that is absent from the sequence 5 kb upstream of the erythroid transcription start site.