(Received for publication, November 15, 1995)
From the
Proteins of the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family are
transcription factors that bind DNA containing the E box motif (CANNTG)
found in the promoters of many muscle-specific genes. ITF-2 is a bHLH
protein with widespread expression that is thought to form active
heterodimers with MyoD, a muscle-specific bHLH transcription factor. We
have isolated cDNAs derived from two alternatively spliced forms of
mouse ITF-2, termed MITF-2A and -2B. These proteins differ in their N
termini. Neither MITF-2A nor -2B transactivated the cardiac
-actin promoter, which contains an E box, when transfected
into nonmuscle cells. In fact, MITF-2B inhibited MyoD activation of the cardiac
-actin promoter. This inhibitory activity
required the N-terminal 83 amino acids since MITF-2A showed no
inhibitory activity, and a mutant MITF-2B with deletion of the
N-terminal 83 amino acids failed to inhibit MyoD-mediated
transcriptional activation. MyoD activity was also inhibited by Id, a
HLH protein, and this inhibition was reversed by the addition of excess
E12 or MITF-2A. However, the inhibition of MyoD activity by MITF-2B was
not reversed with E12 or MITF-2A. While Id is thought to inhibit MyoD
by binding and sequestering potential dimerization partners, MITF-2B
appears to inhibit MyoD activity by forming an inactive heterodimer
with MyoD. Thus, differentially spliced transcripts of mouse ITF-2
encode different proteins that appear to dimerize with MyoD and
activate or repress transcription.
During skeletal muscle development, a family of transcription
factors of the bHLH ()class plays a pivotal role in inducing
and maintaining the differentiated character of skeletal muscle (Olson,
1990; Weintraub et al., 1991; Sassoon, 1993). These
transcription factors, MyoD, myf-5, myogenin, myf-6/MRF-4/herculin
(Davis et al., 1987; Braun et al., 1989; Edmondson
and Olson, 1989; Olson, 1990; Rhodes and Konieczny, 1989; Wright et
al., 1989; Braun et al., 1990; Miner and Wold, 1990)
activate the transcription of many muscle-specific genes by binding to
DNA at E box sites (CANNTG) within their promoters (Lassar et
al., 1989).
The active forms of these transcription factors are thought to be heterodimers comprised of a myogenic bHLH protein and a ubiquitous E type bHLH protein (Lassar et al., 1991). The latter proteins are derived from alternatively spliced transcripts from two genes, one called E12 (also called E2A, E2-5, or ITF1) (Murre et al., 1989a; Henthorn et al., 1990b; Nourse et al., 1990) and the other called ITF-2 (also called E2-2, SEF2, or TFE) (Henthorn et al., 1990a; Corneliussen et al., 1991; Javaux et al., 1991). The basic region of these transcription factors is responsible for binding to the E box sequence in DNA, while the HLH domain mediates dimerization. Homodimers of E12 are able to transactivate some E box-containing promoters, while homodimers of ITF-2 cannot (Henthorn et al., 1990a). Although homodimers of MyoD are inactive, heterodimers of MyoD and E12 or MyoD and ITF-2 can activate promoters containing E box sequences (Lassar et al., 1991). Thus, MyoD requires heterodimerization with ubiquitous E type proteins for activity. All of the E type bHLH proteins contain a conserved motif, designated the loop-helix (LH) motif, which is responsible for most of the transcriptional activation activity of these proteins (Quong et al., 1993).
Lineage-specific bHLH proteins exist in tissues other than muscle. MASH1 and MASH2 are bHLH proteins that are restricted to neuronal lineages (Johnson et al., 1990). They are mammalian homologues of the Drosophila achaete-scute genes. Tal-1, tal-2, and lyl-1 are bHLH proteins that are restricted to hematopoietic tissues (Chen et al., 1990; Xia et al., 1991; Mellentin et al., 1989). These three proteins have been implicated in the development of human lymphoid malignancies. The neurogenic and the hematopoietic bHLH proteins heterodimerize with E12 protein (Murre et al., 1989b; Hsu et al., 1991; Voronova and Lee, 1994).
The protein Id has an HLH motif, but it lacks the basic domain. Id is believed to act as a negative regulator of other bHLH proteins through the formation of heterodimeric complexes that fail to bind DNA (Benezra et al., 1990). Id mRNA levels decrease upon terminal differentiation of several cell lines, including myoblasts, consistent with the idea that transcription from E box containing promoters is regulated by both activating and inhibitory transcription factors. Because no correlation is evident between the order of expression of the myogenic bHLH proteins and the appearance of specific contractile proteins (Ontell et al., 1993), it is possible that the presence of E type bHLH and inhibitory HLH proteins may participate in regulating myogenesis.
We have examined the effects
of bHLH proteins on the activity of the muscle-specific cardiac
-actin promoter. The first 440 bp of the human cardiac
-actin promoter contains one E box, which is essential for cardiac
-actin expression in skeletal muscle (Skerjanc
and McBurney, 1994). MyoD transactivates the cardiac
-actin promoter in transient transfection experiments (Pari et
al., 1991; Sartorelli et al., 1990; Skerjanc and
McBurney, 1994). We cloned cDNAs derived from mRNAs of two
alternatively spliced forms of mouse ITF-2, termed MITF-2A and -2B.
Neither MITF-2A nor -2B transactivated the cardiac
-actin promoter. However, MITF-2B inhibited the transactivation of the cardiac
-actin promoter by MyoD while MITF-2A did not.
Fragments of several bHLH cDNAs were amplified, subcloned, and sequenced, as described previously (Skerjanc and McBurney, 1994). The amplified cDNA fragment encoding ITF-2 encompasses the conserved bHLH domain and has the following sequence: AACACCGCCCGGGAGCGCCTGAGGGTCCGAGATATCAACGAGGCTTTCAAGGAGCTTGGCCGTATGGTGCAGCTCCACCTGAAGAGCGACAAGCCCCAGACCAAGCTCCTGATCCTCCACAACGCCGT.
The MITF-2 probes were prepared by replacing cold dCTP with 50
µCi of [-
P]dCTP during a PCR
amplification with 10 ng of the amplified MITF-2 cDNA fragment.
Standard procedures (Sambrook et al., 1989) were
used to plate 500,000 plaques onto 10 150-mm plates. Plaques
were transferred to Hybond-N and denatured by autoclaving for 2 min at
100 °C. DNA was cross-linked by UV irradiation, and the filters
were hybridized for 16 h at 42 °C with the radiolabeled ITF-2 PCR
product. Washing was performed for 30 min at room temperature in 2
SCC, 0.2% SDS and for 15 min at 65 °C in 0.2
SCC,
0.2% SDS. Hybridization was visualized by autoradiography. Ten positive
plaques were identified from the 500,000 plaques screened, and six were
isolated after three rounds of plaque purification.
DNA sequence alignment was performed using DNASTAR software (DNASTAR Inc., Computer systems for molecular biology and genetics, Madison, WI). The two DNA sequences were aligned (Wilbur and Lipman, 1983) with k-tuple size of 3, range of 20, and gap penalty of 3. The similarity index is reported in Fig. 2.
Figure 2: Summary of the homologies between various E type bHLH cDNAs. The cDNAs are named in the left-hand column, while their sources are named in the right-hand column. Untranslated regions are indicated as gray boxes, the LH domain as a striped box, and the bHLH domain as a black box. Initiator methionine sequences and stop codons are shown as ATG and TGA, respectively. The nucleotide identity between the clone and MITF-2B is indicated in percent by the series of numbers in the boxes. The top seven cDNAs derive from the ITF-2 gene, while HEB and E12 are from different genes.
-Galactosidase and CAT
assays were performed as described previously (Norton and Coffin, 1985;
Sleigh, 1986). Each
-galactosidase activity was normalized for
transfection efficiency with the CAT activity from that transfected
culture.
The P19[MyoD] cell line stably expresses MyoD and
has been described previously (Skerjanc et al., 1994).
Differentiation was induced by plating 5 10
P19 or
P19[MyoD] cells into 60-mm bacterial dishes containing either
1 µM retinoic acid or 0.8% Me
SO. Cells were
cultured as aggregates for 5 days and then plated in tissue culture
dishes and harvested for RNA on day 6. Me
SO treatment under
these conditions induces cardiac muscle in P19 cells and skeletal
muscle in P19[MyoD] cells. Retinoic acid treatment induces
neuroectoderm in P19 cells and a mixture of neuroectoderm and skeletal
muscle in P19[MyoD] cells (Skerjanc et al., 1994).
The RNase protection was
performed as described in the RPA II kit (Ambion Inc.) by hybridizing
2.2 fmol of riboprobe with 5 µg of total sample RNA or 10 µg of
torulla yeast RNA. Total RNA was isolated (Auffray and Rougeon, 1980)
from P19 and P19[MyoD] cells on day 0 and on day 6 after
treatment with MeSO and retinoic acid as well as from mouse
brain, liver, heart, and leg muscle. After RNase digestion of the
hybridized probe and sample RNAs, protected fragments were separated on
a 5% polyacrylamide, 8 M urea gel and visualized by
autoradiography.
To estimate the size of the bands protected from
RNase digestion, the 1-kb ladder was labeled with
[-
P]ATP using the exchange reaction with
bacteriophage T4 polynucleotide kinase, as described previously
(Sambrook et al., 1989). The labeled 1-kb ladder was subjected
to electrophoresis alongside the RNase protection samples. A graph of
log molecular weight versus distance from the origin was used
to determine the sizes of the RNase-resistant fragments. The calculated
molecular weights agreed with the predicted molecular weights within an
error of 10%.
Figure 1: Panel A, schematic outline of the relationship between the three cloned cDNAs and MITF-2A and MITF-2B. Untranslated regions are indicated as gray boxes, the LH domain as a striped box, and the bHLH domain as a black box. The RSRS domain is shown as a triangle in clone 1. The unique 5` sequence of MITF-2A is shown as a wavy line in clone 3 and as a boldface box in MITF-2A. Restriction sites used in subcloning are indicated. Panel B, the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of MITF-2B. The LH, RSRS, and bHLH domains are indicated by shaded areas between nucleotides 1532 and1741, 2160 and 2172, and 2222 and 2401. The position at which MITF-2A becomes identical to MITF-2B is shaded at nucleotide 1072. Amino acid residues are presented in capital letters using the single-letter code, and nucleotides are in small letters. Panel C, the unique 5` nucleotide and amino acid sequence of MITF-2A. The sequence of MITF-2A that is identical to MITF-2B is shaded, starting at nucleotide 60.
Clone 1 contains both upstream and downstream stop codons along with an open reading frame predicting a 670-amino acid protein. It has a truncated 3`-untranslated region, probably because the oligo(dT) cDNA primer initiated reverse transcription at an internal A-rich sequence. Clone 2 contains a partial coding region and an extended 3`-untranslated region. The nucleotide and amino acid sequence for clones 1 and 2 were designated MITF-2B and are shown in Fig. 1B.
Clone 3 also contains both upstream and downstream stop codons and an open reading frame identical to that of clone 1 except in two regions. The first 159 bp of clone 3 is different from that of clone 1 and predicts a protein with a different N terminus that we designated MITF-2A (Fig. 1C). In addition, clone 1 contained 12 nucleotides inserted 50 bp upstream of the bHLH domain that were absent from clones 2 and 3. These 12 nucleotides encode the four amino acids, RSRS, indicated in Fig. 1, A and B. Clones 1 and 3 contain an LH motif, which is the presumptive transcriptional activation domain (Quong et al., 1993).
The RSRS sequence is found in three of the seven cDNAs from the ITF-2 gene and appears to derive from a mini-exon that may or may not be included.
The 3`-untranslated region of MITF-2A/B is about 1 kb longer than the sequences cloned previously. A remarkable sequence identity (93-95%) was found in the 3`-untranslated regions of ITF-2 from the different species. The 5` sequences are the least conserved with only 39-45% homology for SEF2-1A, B, and D with MITF-2B.
The extent of nucleic acid homology between the related but distinct gene products, HEB (Hu et al., 1992) and E12 (Nourse et al., 1990), with MITF-2B is also shown in Fig. 2. These cDNAs show less homology in the coding region (61-80%), with the greatest similarity in the bHLH domain. The 5`- and 3`-untranslated regions have very low homology (39-48%) with MITF-2B. Neither cDNA contains the RSRS domain.
Figure 3:
MITF-2B inhibits MyoD activity. Panel
A, MITF-2B, MITF-2B, and Id inhibit MyoD activity, while
MITF-2A does not. P19 cells were transfected with 5 µg of the
reporter construct CA-LacZ and 1 µg of the standardization reporter
PGK-CAT, along with expression constructs encoding bHLH proteins. MyoD
indicates the presence or absence of 1.5 µg of PGK-MyoD. The
expression constructs for MITF-2A, MITF-2B, MITF-2B
, and Id were
present at concentrations of 1.5, 3, and 6 µg/transfection. Panel B, the inhibition of MyoD activity requires the
N-terminal 83 amino acids of MITF-2B. P19 cells were co-transfected as
in panel A with CA-LacZ, PGK-CAT, and PGK-MyoD along with 6
µg of plasmid containing the pgk-1 promoter driving the
indicated construct.
-Galactosidase activities were assayed and
normalized for transfection efficiency against CAT activity and to the
activity of the positive control (MyoD alone). Error bars represent standard error calculated from between three and 10
different experiments.
MITF-2A and -2B
encode proteins identical but for two regions. The N termini are
different, and MITF-2B contains the 4 amino acids, RSRS, just upstream
of the bHLH domain. In order to determine which of these two regions is
responsible for the MITF-2B inhibition of MyoD activity, the 12 bp
encoding the RSRS sequence were removed from MITF-2B, in a construct
called MITF-2B. MITF-2B
, like MITF-2B, inhibited MyoD
activity (Fig. 3A). Since MITF-2B
is identical to
MITF-2A in all regions except the first 182 amino acids, the inhibitory
activity of MITF-2B must require the amino-terminal domain.
To
further define the inhibitory domain, the first 83 amino acids of
MITF-2B were deleted and replaced with six copies of the 11-amino
acid c-myc epitope (Evan et al., 1985) creating
Myc-MITF-2B
N. As a control, this c-myc tag was fused to the N
terminus of intact MITF-2B creating Myc-MITF-2B. The MyoD activation of
the cardiac
-actin promoter was reduced to 17% by MITF-2B
but to only 78% by Myc-MITF-2B
N (Fig. 3B). This
suggests that the inhibitory domain resides in the first 83 amino acids
of MITF-2B. The Myc-MITF-2B reduced promoter expression by an
intermediate amount (47%), suggesting that the c-myc tag may interfere
with the region near the N terminus that mediates transcriptional
inhibition.
Id is thought to inhibit MyoD activity by forming inactive heterodimers with E type bHLH proteins, sequestering them away from MyoD (Benezra et al., 1990). In agreement with this model, an excess of E12 reversed the Id inhibition (Fig. 4). An excess of MITF-2A also reversed Id inhibition (Fig. 4), suggesting that E12 and MITF-2A can heterodimerize with Id and/or MyoD. However, neither E12 nor MITF-2A was able to reverse the inhibition created by MITF-2B (Fig. 4).
Figure 4: E12 and MITF-2A reverse the inhibition of MyoD activity by Id but not by MITF-2B. P19 cells were transfected as described in the legend to Fig. 3with and without 1.5 µg of PGK-MyoD, 1.5 µg of PGK-Id or PGK-MITF-2B, and 6 µg of PGK-E12 or PGK-MITF-2A, as indicated. Error bars represent standard error calculated from between four and 10 different experiments.
We examined RNA from
several cell types and tissues. We found that MITF-2B transcripts,
indicated as the labeled band 1, were present in all cell types
examined, including P19 stem cells (lane 1 and 2),
P19-derived cardiac muscle (lane 3),
P19[MyoD]-derived skeletal muscle (lane 4), P19- (lane 5), and P19[MyoD]- (lane 6) derived
neuroectoderm, mouse brain (lane 7), mouse liver (lane
8), and mouse leg muscle and heart (data not shown). Protection of
a riboprobe prepared from -actin cDNA indicated that all of the
samples contained equal amounts of mRNA (Fig. 5B).
Figure 5:
RNase protection demonstrates that MITF-2B
is widely expressed. Radiolabeled antisense riboprobes for MITF-2B (panel A) or -actin (panel B) were hybridized to
5 µg of RNA from P19 stem cells (lane 1),
P19[MyoD] stem cells (lane 2), P19-derived cardiac
muscle (lane 3), P19[MyoD]-derived skeletal muscle (lane 4), P19-derived neuroectoderm (lane 5),
P19[MyoD]-derived neuroectoderm and skeletal muscle (lane
6), mouse brain (lane 7), mouse liver (lane 8),
and torulla yeast (lane 9). All samples were digested with
RNase, except lane 10, which is a control for riboprobe integrity.
Samples were separated by electrophoresis on an acrylamide/urea gel and
visualized by autoradiography. The sizes of the bands, determined by
comparison with a radiolabeled 1-kb ladder, are indicated on the right,
and the corresponding cDNAs are indicated on the
left.
The level of MITF-2A mRNA was variable in the samples analyzed. MITF-2A transcripts were present in all samples containing neurons (Fig. 5A lanes 5-7, band 5). Barely detectable levels were found in liver (Fig. 5A, lane 8, band 5) and the transcript was undetectable in P19 stem cells, P19-derived cardiac muscle and P19-derived skeletal muscle (Fig. 5A, lanes 1p4, band 5). Thus, MITF-2A seems to be expressed at high levels only in cells of the neuroectoderm lineage.
Band 3 appears to derive from MITF-2 transcript spliced to yield the D isoform represented by SEF2-1D (Fig. 2). This band was detected in all cell types and was elevated about 7-fold in brain tissue (lane 7).
Two additional bands, 2 and 4, were detected in all cells, representing MITF-2 transcripts with 5`-ends derived from as yet unidentified exons.
We cloned 3 cDNAs containing sequences encoding the bHLH
region of the mouse ITF-2 protein. These cDNAs were derived from two
alternatively spliced transcripts called MITF-2A and MITF-2B. Neither
MITF-2A nor MITF-2B encoded a protein that by itself activated
expression of the cardiac -actin promoter. In fact, the
MITF-2B protein inhibited MyoD-induced expression from the cardiac
-actin promoter, while the MITF-2A protein did not. The
inhibitory activity of MITF-2B requires the first 83 amino acids at its
amino terminus. The MITF-2A protein is a transcription activator
because it activated cardiac
-actin promoter expression
when co-expressed in cells along with MyoD and Id. Thus, the MITF-2A
and MITF-2B proteins arise from the same gene by differential splicing
or different promoter usage and encode transcription factors that
activate and repress expression, respectively.
Both MITF-2B and Id inhibited MyoD activity, but they appear to do so by different mechanisms. While the inhibitory activity of Id was effectively lost in the presence of excess E12 or MITF-2A, these latter two proteins were unable to reverse the inhibition of MITF-2B. We interpret our results as suggesting that Id inhibits primarily by sequestering the ``active'' E type proteins from MyoD, while MITF-2B seems to inhibit by forming stable heterodimers directly with MyoD.
Although
we found that MITF-2B inhibited MyoD activation of the cardiac
-actin promoter, human ITF-2 protein cooperated with MyoD to
activate promoters containing an E box in COS cells (Lassar et
al., 1991). The HITF-2 used in these experiments was encoded by a
cDNA that was not full-length and contained a synthetic initiation
codon resulting in a protein, which lacked 49 amino acids from the N
terminus when compared with MITF-2B. Since the inhibitory activity of
MITF-2B resides in the N-terminal 83 amino acids, the critical
inhibitory domain may be absent from the HITF-2 used in these
experiments. Alternatively, P19 stem cells may contain a different
complement of bHLH proteins to those in COS cells, resulting in
inhibition by ITF-2 in one system and activation in the other. Evidence
that the two cell types contain different bHLH proteins derives from
the finding that MyoD transfected alone is not active in COS cells but
is active in P19 cells (Lassar et al., 1991; Pari et
al., 1991; Skerjanc and McBurney, 1994).
Other transcription
factors are alternatively spliced to create one form that activates and
another form that inhibits transcription. However, the splicing usually
involves the removal of an activation domain, resulting in a shorter
form, which is an inhibitor, and a longer form, which is an activator.
For example, FosB undergoes alternative splicing to remove a C-terminal
transcriptional activation domain, creating FosB, which is a
transcriptional repressor (for review, see Foulkes and
Sassone-Corsi(1992)). TFE3 is a bHLH leucine zipper transcription
factor that binds to the intronic enhancer of the immunoglobulin heavy
chain gene. Alternative splicing at the N terminus removes the first
105 nucleotides and creates an inhibitor of transcription (Roman et
al., 1991). Finally, the retinoic acid receptors
1 and
2
undergo alternative splicing in which different N-terminal amino acids
produce transcriptional repressors or activators (Husmann et
al., 1991).
Apart from differences at their 5`-ends, cDNAs from mouse and human ITF-2 may or may not contain a 12-bp sequence in the coding region 50 bp upstream of the bHLH domain. These 12 bp encode the 4 amino acids RSRS, but the role, if any, of this tetrapeptide in MITF-2 activity remains unclear.
The transcripts encoding MITF-2A and MITF-2B appear to be present in most cell types and tissues investigated, making it difficult to deduce the roles of these transcription factors in regulating expression of E box containing genes. Given that many transcription factors are regulated post-transcriptionally, such as by phosphorylation or protein turnover, it seems possible that the inhibitory and activation effects of MITF-2 isoforms might be subject to additional means of modulation.
The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank(TM)/EMBL Data Bank with accession number(s) U16321 [GenBank]and U16322[GenBank].