Characterization of the human ABL promoter regions

Gel retardation and DNAase 1 footprinting experiments have been performed to characterize the promoter sequences of exon 1a and 1b of the human ABL gene. Several Sp1 motifs and CCAAT boxes are found to be protected by nuclear proteins in the 1b promoter but none of the 7 reported Sp1 sites in 1a were found to bind protein. Multiple sets of initiation sites seem to exist in the 1b promoter region which may represent individual initiation sites, distributed over a DNA region of up to 700 bp. Starting with the most distal initiation site, 1a and 1b ABL promoter sequences show a high degree of homology, suggesting that one is derived from the other. However, multiple evolutionary changes in the 1a promoter sequence indicate that type 1a ABL expression may be differently regulated than 1b.