Transcriptional regulation alone does not explain the constitutive expression of the interleukin 2 receptor

H Kanamori1, N Suzuki, N Ishida

  • 1Department of Medical Chemistry, Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.

Immunology Letters
|March 1, 1989
PubMed

We have identified a suppressive element in the upstream region of the interleukin 2 (IL-2) receptor L chain (Tac) promoter. The inhibitory activity of this element was retained in human T cell leukemia virus type-1 (HTLV-1)-infected T cell lines which express constitutively a large number of IL-2 receptors on the cell surface. The promoter activities of the IL-2 receptor gene did not always correlate with the strong expression of the receptor and its mRNA in the HTLV-1-infected T cell lines we analysed. The results indicate that the constitutive up-regulation of the IL-2 receptor in HTLV-1-infected T cells may be ascribed to not only the transcriptional but also post-transcriptional regulation.

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