Identification of enhancer-like elements in human IFN-gamma genomic DNA

We have previously shown that transfection of a plasmid clone containing full length human IFN-gamma genomic DNA into a murine T-lymphoblastoid line is followed by basal expression of the transfected gene, with increased transcription occurring upon stimulation of the cells with either phorbol ester or IL-2. In addition, upon transfection of this DNA into murine fibroblasts, high level constitutive transcription was observed. In contrast to the results obtained under tissue culture conditions, introduction of the same DNA into the mouse germline resulted in tissue-specific expression of the transgene. We now report identification of a region 500-bp 5' of the human IFN-gamma TATAA box that has strong, PMA-inducible, enhancer-like activity when linked to a reporter gene (CAT) and transfected into a murine T cell line. However, when the same region of IFN-gamma genomic DNA was introduced into NIH-3T3 cells, no enhancer activity was detected either in the presence or absence of PMA. We have further found that an intronic region of the IFN-gamma genomic DNA (nucleotides 405-674) also contains enhancer activity that is functional in either fibroblasts or T cells. Enhancer activity of the intronic region is also PMA-inducible in the mouse T cells but constitutive in fibroblasts. Collectively, our observations suggest that control of human IFN-gamma gene expression is complex, involving noncontiguous regulatory domains in both 5' flanking and intronic regions of that gene.