Isolation and structural characterization of the human 4F2 heavy-chain gene, an inducible gene involved in T-lymphocyte activation.

The human 4F2 cell surface antigen is a 120-kilodalton (kDa) disulfide-linked heterodimer which is composed of an 80- to 90-kDa glycosylated heavy chain (4F2HC) and a 35- to 40-kDa nonglycosylated light chain (4F2LC). 4F2 belongs to a family of inducible cell surface molecules which are involved in T-lymphocyte activation and growth. To better understand the molecular mechanism(s) that controls 4F2HC gene expression in both resting and activated T cells, a 4F2HC human genomic clone was isolated and structurally characterized. The 4F2HC gene spans 8 kilobases of chromosome 11 and is composed of nine exons. The 5' upstream region of the gene displays several properties which are characteristic of housekeeping genes. It is G+C rich and hypomethylated in peripheral blood lymphocyte DNA and contains multiple binding sites for the Sp1 transcription factor while lacking TATA or CCAAT sequences. This region of the gene also displays sequence homologies with several other inducible T-cell genes, including the interleukin-2, interleukin-2 receptor alpha chain, dihydrofolate reductase, thymidine kinase, and transferrin receptor genes. A 255-base-pair fragment of the 4F2HC gene which contains 154 base pairs of the 5' flanking sequence was able to efficiently promote expression of the bacterial chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene in human Jurkat T cells, indicating that it contains promoter or enhancer (or both) sequences. Analyses of chromatin structure in resting and lectin-activated T cells revealed the presence of stable DNase I-hypersensitive sites within both the 5' flanking and intron 1 regions of the 4F2HC gene. Although the 4F2HC gene displayed many of the structural features characteristic of a constitutively expressed gene, lectin-mediated activation of resting peripheral blood T lymphocytes resulted in a dramatic increase in steady-state levels of 4F2HC mRNA.