Differential steroid hormone induction of transcription from the mouse mammary tumor virus promoter.

The Mouse Mammary Tumor Virus (MMTV) contains sequences in its proximal promoter region to which both glucocorticoid and progesterone receptors can bind. In transient transfection experiments both hormones are able to stimulate transcription from reporter plasmids containing either native or consensus hormone response elements (glucocorticoid response element/progesterone response element). Previous experiments have demonstrated that the MMTV long terminal repeat is reproducibly assembled into a phased array of nucleosomes when stably introduced into cells. Stimulation by glucocorticoids of endogenous templates led to a rapid but transient increase in transcription initiation and mRNA accumulation that can be correlated with increased sensitivity to restriction enzymes. In contrast, experiments using progesterone or a truncated glucocorticoid receptor failed to elicit a similar increase in mRNA levels as dexamethasone from stable chromatin templates. In an attempt to understand this differential response, we have compared the responsiveness of the MMTV promoter to glucocorticoids and progesterone when it is organized in either stable chromatin or in transiently acquired plasmids. Our results demonstrate that the native chromatin structure prevents activation of this locus by progesterone, but permits stimulation by glucocorticoids.