SV40 late promoter: contribution of the initiation site sequences to basal late promoter activity

We have previously shown that the +7 to -53 element of the SV40 late promoter (nt 273 to nt 332) does not have any promoter activity, but is able to stimulate the late promoter activity of the enhancer element. The +7 to -53 element contains several late transcriptional initiation sites and we have shown that its removal results in an increase in the heterogeneity of initiation sites. Furthermore we found that inversion of the +7 to -53 element does not adversely affect the efficiency of late transcription. However, when the +7 to -53 element was inverted, transcription initiated from a single site at nt 302. In fact, we noticed that there is a consensus TATA box signal 26 nt upstream of this single site in the inverted +7 to -53 element. These results may indicate that the ability of +7 to -53 element to function in both orientations is due to the fact that, in both orientations, it possesses sequences capable of fixing the initiation sites of transcription.