Deletion analysis of the Chinese hamster dihydrofolate reductase gene promoter.

Deletion analysis of the 5' flank of the Chinese hamster dihydrofolate reductase (dhfr) gene reveals a promoter region starting 48 base pairs upstream of the major transcriptional start site. A dhfr minigene containing approximately 900 base pairs of 5' flank and one small intron was used as a wild-type standard. Seven deletions were created with BAL-31. Promoter activity was measured in three ways: 1) transient expression of the dhfr gene; 2) frequence of transfection of dhfr- Chinese hamster cells to a dhfr+ phenotype; and 3) RNase protection analysis of dhfr transcripts in pooled populations of permanently transfected cells. The transient expression assay was developed in this work for the rapid analysis of dhfr promoter mutants; this assay could be of general use for analyzing constructs carrying dhfr as a reporter gene. Two of the deletions define a requirement for part or all of the sequence GGGCGT located 48 base pairs upstream of the major transcriptional start site. This site has been shown to bind transcription factor Sp1 in the mouse dhfr gene. The function of the major promoter is independent of the function of the minor promoter. These minigene constructs also contain cryptic promoters located upstream of the natural start sites, probably in the plasmid vector. Transcripts originating from these upstream sites are inefficiently spliced, but do result in messenger RNA molecules that are translated into active dihydrofolate reductase.