Steroid hormone receptor status defines the MMTV promoter chromatin structure in vivo

The ability to respond to small signalling molecules such as steroid hormones is important for many physiological processes. Steroid hormones act through a group of high affinity receptors that regulate transcription by binding to hormone response elements (HREs) located within the promoters of target genes, which themselves are organized with nuclear proteins to form chromatin. To dissect the mechanisms(s) of steroid hormone action we have used the steroid inducible mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) promoter as a model system. The MMTV promoter is assembled into a phased array of nucleosomes that are specifically positioned in rodent cells. Induction of transcription by glucocorticoids is accompanied by the appearance of a hypersensitive region in the proximal promoter which allows the hormone dependent assembly of a preinitiation complex including transcription factors such as nuclear factor 1 (NF1) and the octamer transcription factor (OTF). Surprisingly, when introduced by transient transfection, the progesterone receptor (PR) is unable to activate this promoter in vivo, a finding that may result from its inability to alter MMTV promoter chromatin. In an attempt to investigate the failure of the PR to activate the promoter, we have stably introduced the MMTV promoter into human T47D breast cancer cells that express high levels of the PR. In contrast to what has been observed previously in rodent cells, the MMTV templates resident in human breast cancer cells adopt a novel and constitutively open chromatin structure. The constitutively open chromatin structure is accompanied by the hormone independent loading of transcription factors including the PR and NF1. In T47D cells that stably express the glucocorticoid receptor, the MMTV promoter responds to glucocorticoids, but not progestins, and displays glucocorticoid induced restriction enzyme hypersensitivity and transcription factor loading. These findings suggest that the organization of the MMTV chromatin structure is dependent upon the cell type and receptor status of the recipient cell into which the MMTV promoter is stably introduced.