Role of intron I in expression of the human factor IX gene

The first intron (intron I) of the human factor IX gene, which has been previously suggested of having an expression-augmenting activity, was systematically studied for its potential enhancer activity. When tested with the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase expression vector with a minimal factor IX promoter, subregions of intron I showed only marginal enhancing activities (1.7-1.9-fold enhancement at the highest). Smaller subregions encompassing nucleotides 5660-6350 of the intron sequence even showed some weak negative regulatory activities (approximately 50% suppression at the highest), while a cytomegalovirus enhancer sequence, which was used as the positive control, had a 7-fold enhancement. A set of three factor IX minigene expression vectors with the same factor IX promoter were then constructed: p-416FIXc which contained the factor IX cDNA, p-416FIXm1 which contained the factor IX cDNA with a largely truncated intron I, and p-416FIXm2 which contained the factor IX cDNA with the intron I sequence further truncated. The p-416FIXm1 and p-416FIXm2 constructs showed 7-9-fold higher expression activities than p-416FIXc. The elevated factor IX antigen levels agreed well with the grossly elevated factor IX clotting activity and mRNA levels. These results indicate that the expression enhancing activity of intron I is not due to specific enhancer elements present in the intron subsequences, but is due to functional splicing sequences present in the precursor mRNAs produced from the minigene constructs containing intron I. By being efficiently assembled into spliceosome complexes, transcripts with splicing sequences may be better protected in the nucleus from random degradations than those without such sequences.