Serum, AP-1 and Ets-1 stimulate the human ets-1 promoter.

The ets-1 proto-oncogene codes for a transcription factor. In order to understand how ets-1 is regulated, we have cloned its promoter. We show that the promoter is inducible by serum and expression of c-Fos and c-Jun, and it is positively auto-regulated by its gene product. A 50 base-pair sequence is sufficient to confer c-Fos + c-Jun and c-Ets-1 responsiveness to a heterologous promoter. This element contains two AP1 and one Ets-1 like motifs. Striking, AP-1 and Ets-1 motifs are found in oncogene responsive units (ORU's) of other promoters, suggesting that combining these motifs is a common mechanism for generating mitogen responsive transcription elements.