Abstract
NKX3.1 is a prostate-specific homeobox gene related strongly to prostate development and prostate cancer. However, little is known about the mechanism for regulation of NKX3.1 in prostate cancer. With RT-PCR and western blot, we found that NKX3.1 expression was enhanced by over-expression of Sp1 at both the mRNA and protein levels in prostate cancer LNCaP cells. To identify the Sp1-elements in the promoter region of NKX3.1, a 521 bp-promoter of human NKX3.1 gene containing three possible Sp1-elements was cloned into the upstream of the luciferase reporter gene in pGL3-basic plasmid. With deletion mutation analysis, plasmid construction, EMSA and oligonucleotide decoy technique, two Sp1-elements which located between +29 to +43 and −60 to −46 of NKX3.1 gene were identified and proven to be functional elements. It will be important to further study on the functions and the regulatory mechanisms of Sp1 element in NKX3.1 gene expression.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Dr. Tan-Jun Tong at Beijing University in China for kindly providing the pCMV-Sp1 plasmid used in this study. This work was supported by Natural science Foundation of Shandong province (No.Y2005C10, No.Y2005C03 and No.Y2007C96); National Natural science Foundation of China (No.30670581, No.30470952 and No.30870732)
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Chun-xiao Yu and Tong Jin contributed equally to this work.
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Yu, Cx., Jin, T., Chen, Ww. et al. Identification of Sp1-elements in the promoter region of human homeobox gene NKX3.1 . Mol Biol Rep 36, 2353–2360 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-009-9457-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-009-9457-y