Pituitary-type transcription of the human prolactin gene in the absence of Pit-1.

We describe a human (h) PRL-producing cell line, SKUT-1B-20, which we isolated as a subclone of a uterine sarcoma cell line. Although this cell line is of uterine origin, it does not use the decidual-specific upstream promoter of the hPRL gene, but transcribes the hPRL gene from the downstream pituitary-type transcription start site, as determined by Northern blot, reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and primer extension analyses. This is particularly intriguing because SKUT-1B-20 cells lack the transcription factor Pit-1. No Pit-1 messenger RNA was detectable by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, and endogenous Pit-1 target genes (GH, PRL, and Pit-1) were refractory to transfected Pit-1 expression vector, whereas in cotransfection experiments, Pit-1 efficiently activated reporter gene fusion constructs carrying 5'-flanking sequences of the human and rat PRL or the mouse Pit-1 genes. By transfecting reporter genes containing 8.7 kilobases of DNA flanking the hPRL pituitary-specific start site (hPRL-8700/Luc) and deletions thereof, we located a Pit-1-independent cis-active region more than 7 kilobases upstream of the start site. The most distal 1650 or 880 base pairs of the hPRL genomic fragment (which extends to -8784 base pairs), when placed directly upstream of the homologous hPRL or the heterologous thymidine kinase promoters, conferred transcriptional activation to those promoters. SKUT-1B-20 cell-specific activation of hPRL-8700/Luc could not be suppressed by the introduction of an inhibitor of protein kinase A (PKA), PKI. This is the first demonstration of pituitary-type PRL gene transcription independent of Pit-1 and activation of the PKA pathway. The SKUT-1B-20 cell line was then used in reconstitution experiments to delineate the role of Pit-1 in modulating the transcriptional effects of phorbol ester, PKA, and estrogen receptor (ER) on the hPRL gene. The low response of hPRL/luciferase fusion genes to phorbol ester was greatly enhanced by cotransfected Pit-1 and was mediated by the proximal region between -250 and -38. The catalytic subunit of PKA, C beta, was able to elicit a moderate induction of hPRL-8700/Luc even in the absence of Pit-1. A potential estrogen response element has been located in the hPRL gene sequence at a position similar to that of the estrogen response element of the rat PRL gene immediately adjacent to the distal enhancer.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)