Abstract
The mouse major urinary proteins (Mups) are encoded by a large family of highly related genes clustered on chromosome 4. Mups, synthesized primarily and abundantly in the liver and secreted through the kidneys, exhibit male-biased expression. Mups bind a variety of volatile ligands; these ligands, and Mup proteins themselves, influence numerous behavioral traits. Although urinary Mup protein levels vary between inbred mouse strains, this difference is most pronounced in BALB/cJ mice, which have dramatically low urinary Mup levels; this BALB/cJ trait had been mapped to a locus on chromosome 15. We previously identified Zhx2 (zinc fingers and homeoboxes 2) as a regulator of numerous liver-enriched genes. Zhx2 is located on chromosome 15, and a natural hypomorphic mutation in the BALB/cJ Zhx2 allele dramatically reduces Zhx2 expression. Based on these data, we hypothesized that reduced Zhx2 levels are responsible for lower Mup expression in BALB/cJ mice. Using both transgenic and knock-out mice along with in vitro assays, our data show that Zhx2 binds Mup promoters and is required for high levels of Mup expression in the adult liver. In contrast to previously identified Zhx2 targets that appear to be repressed by Zhx2, Mup genes are positively regulated by Zhx2. These data identify Zhx2 as a novel regulator of Mup expression and indicate that Zhx2 activates as well as represses expression of target genes.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-3-2017
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M116.768275
Funding Information
This work is supported by Public Health Service Grants R01DK074816 (to B. T. S.), P20RR021954 (to B. T. S.), and T32DK007778 (to K. T. C.) and National Science Foundation Grant MCB-1158234 (to M. L. P.).
Related Content
This article contains supplemental Experimental Procedures, Figs. S1 and S2, and Tables S1 and S2.
Repository Citation
Jiang, Jieyun; Creasy, Kate Townsend; Purnell, Justin; Peterson, Martha L.; and Spear, Brett T., "Zhx2 (Zinc Fingers and Homeoboxes 2) Regulates Major Urinary Protein Gene Expression in the Mouse Liver" (2017). Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Faculty Publications. 104.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/microbio_facpub/104
Supplemental Data
Notes/Citation Information
Published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, v. 292, no. 16, p. 6765-6774.
This research was originally published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Jieyun Jiang, Kate Townsend Creasy, Justin Purnell, Martha L. Peterson, and Brett T. Spear. RIT1 GTPase Regulates Sox2 Zhx2 (Zinc Fingers and Homeoboxes 2) Regulates Major Urinary Protein Gene Expression in the Mouse Liver. J. Biol. Chem. 2017; 292:6765-6774. © 2017 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.
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