Constitutive and anaerobically induced DNase-I-hypersensitive sites in the 5' region of the maize Adh1 gene.

DNase-I-hypersensitive sites have been characterized in a plant gene, maize Adh1 (which encodes alcohol dehydrogenase 1). It has been generally recognized in animal genes that the chromatin of the 5' flanking region can be characterized by the accessibility of its DNA to the nuclease DNase I (EC 3.1.21.1), indicating which areas in the promoter are "open" to nuclear factors. The 5' region of the maize Adh1 gene contains two distinct DNase-I-hypersensitive regions, one constitutively present from position -160 to -700 and one that is anaerobically induced from position -35 to -150. The constitutive region contains three major hypersensitive sites, one of which corresponds in part to a region of potential Z-DNA. The induced hypersensitive region includes TATAA at -38 and CAAT at -100 as well as other potential regulatory sequences.