期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1992
卷号:89
期号:3
页码:1045-1049
DOI:10.1073/pnas.89.3.1045
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Glucose is known to increase the cAMP concentration in pancreatic beta cells. To determine the mechanism by which cAMP augments insulin gene expression, we first identified the cAMP response elements (CREs) of the human insulin gene. In DNase I footprint analysis, the bacterially synthesized CRE-binding protein, CRE-BP1, protected four sites: two sites in the region upstream from the insulin core promoter, one site in the first exon, and one site in the first intron. To examine the roles of those four sites, we constructed a series of DNA plasmids in which the wild-type and mutant insulin promoters were linked to the chloramphenicol acetyl-transferase gene. Studies of the transcriptional activity of these plasmids after transfection into hamster insulinoma (HIT) cells showed that these four sites contributed additively to the cAMP inducibility of the insulin promoter. Surprisingly, the c-jun protooncogene product (c-Jun) repressed the cAMP-induced activity of the insulin promoter in a cotransfection assay with the c-Jun expression plasmid. Northern blot analysis demonstrated that the level of c-jun mRNA was dramatically increased by glucose deprivation in HIT cells. These results suggest that glucose may regulate expression of the human insulin gene through multiple CREs and c-Jun.