Quail Pax-6 (Pax-QNR) encodes a transcription factor able to bind and trans-activate its own promoter

Proper growth and development of multicellular organisms requires precise regulation of developmental genes. One aspect of this regulation is at the level of transcription from the gene promoters. As an initial approach to understanding the regulation of the Pax-6 gene, which plays an important role in eye development and perhaps in other developmental processes, we characterized a promoter region of the quail Pax-6 (Pax-QNR) gene. Sequence analysis of the 5' flanking region revealed a TATA-like box and a CAAT box as well as several putative cis-regulatory elements. A 1.5-kilobase pair fragment, containing 1386 base pairs of 5' flanking sequence, the first exon, and a portion of the first intron, was able to efficiently promote expression of the bacterial CAT gene in quail neuroretina cells. Cotransfection of the Pax-QNR promoter with a vector expressing the 46 kilodalton Pax-QNR protein resulted in an increase in Pax-QNR promoter activity. By electrophoretic migration shift assay and immunoselection experiments, we showed that the Pax-QNR protein can interact directly with the Pax-QNR promoter. By footprinting experiments, we identified the binding sites for the Pax-QNR protein within the promoter region. These results show that Pax-QNR encodes a transcriptional activator and that it potentially trans-activates its own promoter.