0000000001012714
AUTHOR
Ana Julia Fernández-alvarez
Reciprocal regulation of the human sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP)-1a promoter by Sp1 and EGR-1 transcription factors.
AbstractSterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP)-1a is a transcription factor that is highly expressed in actively growing cells, and is involved in the biosynthesis of cholesterol, fatty acids and phospholipids. We have mapped the minimal human SREBP-1a promoter region to 75bp upstream of the translation start site where we discovered a functional role for the 3 GC-boxes containing overlapping sites for the Sp1 and EGR-1 transcription factors. Intact SP1-binding sites are essential for promoter activity, whereas EGR-1 suppresses the transcription of the human SREBP-1a promoter. These results reveal a novel physiologically relevant transcriptional mechanism for the reciprocal regul…
Overexpression of the truncated form of high mobility group a proteins (HMGA2) in human myometrial cells induces leiomyoma-like tissue formation
The pathogenesis of uterine leiomyomas, the most common benign tumor in women, is still unknown. This lack of basic knowledge limits the development of novel non-invasive therapies. Our group has previously demonstrated that leiomyoma side population (SP) cells are present in tumor lesions and act like putative tumor-initiating stemcells in human leiomyoma. Moreover, accumulated evidence demonstrates that these benign tumors of mesenchymal origin are characterized by rearrangements of the High Mobility Group A proteins (HMGA). In this work, we tested the hypothesis that leiomyoma development may be due to overexpression of HMGA2 (encoding high mobility group AT-hook2) in myometrial stem cel…