Identification and characterization of multiple erythroid cell proteins that interact with the promoter of the murine alpha-globin gene.

The proteins responsible for erythroid-specific footprints extending to -180 on the mouse alpha-globin gene were identified, enriched, and characterized from extracts of murine erythroleukemia (MEL) cells. Three proteins accounted for most aspects of the footprints. The binding sites of two proteins, termed alpha-CP1 and alpha-CP2, overlapped in the CCAAT box. Further characterization of these two CCAAT binding proteins showed that neither interacted with the adenovirus origin of replication, a strong CCAAT transcription factor-nuclear factor 1 binding site. A third protein, termed alpha-IRP, interacted with two sequences that formed an inverted repeat (IR) between the CCAAT and TATAA boxes. Interestingly, the binding domain of one of the CCAAT factors, alpha-CP1, overlapped one alpha-IRP binding site. alpha-CP1 thus overlapped the binding domains of both alpha-CP2 and alpha-IRP. The IRs included GC-rich sequences reminiscent of SP1-binding sites. Indeed, alpha-IRP bound as well to the alpha-promoter as it did to SP1 sites in the simian virus 40 early promoter. These results suggest that alpha-IRP may be related to the transcription factor Sp1. We determined the level of each alpha-globin-binding activity before and after induced erythroid differentiation of MEL cells. We found that differentiation caused alpha-CP1 activity to drop three- to fivefold, while alpha-IRP activity decreased slightly and alpha-CP2 activity increased two- to threefold.