Regulation of the human glut4 gene expression in tumor RD18 cell line

We tested if glut4, the gene for muscle-specific glucose transporter, underwent some variations of expression in neoplastic cells. Our model was a rhabdomyosarcoma cell line (RD18) which retains the ability to differentiate along the myogenic pathway. Any definable changes of expression of glut4 in normal and RD18 cells were revealed by Northern blot analysis. In order to identify the transcriptional regulatory regions of the glut4 gene we performed a deletion analysis of the 5' flanking region. The downregulation which we found in the expression of this gene in RD18 cells could be related with the activity of a negative regulatory element.