Multiple functional enhancer motifs of rat ribosomal gene

Previous studies from this laboratory have characterized a 174 bp enhancer element which is located 2 kb upstream of the initiation site. Half of the enhancer action is controlled by a 37 bp element at the 3' end of the 174 bp region. We now report that a 43 bp adjacent domain which is located upstream of the 37 bp element constitutes an additional motif of the rDNA enhancer. When the plasmid consisting of the 43 bp DNA upstream of the rDNA core promoter was transcribed in a fractionated rat tumor cell extract (fraction DE-B), transcription of rDNA was augmented 4 fold. Electrphoretic mobility shift and DNAase I footprinting analyses showed that the purified 37 bp enhancer (E1)-binding protein, (E1BF) not only interacted with the enhancer motif E1 but also interacted with the neighbouring 43 bp enhancer domain E2. The specificity of the binding was demonstrated by competition with unlabelled 37 bp and 43 bp fragment and lack of competition with nonspecific DNAs in the mobility shift assay. These studies have shown that a single pol I transcription factor can bind to multiple enhancer domains with no significant sequence homologies and such multiple interactions may result in maximal transcription of ribosomal gene from the core promoter.