Regulation of the Human Cardiac/Slow-Twitch Troponin C Gene by Multiple, Cooperative, Cell-Type-Specific, and MyoD-Responsive Elements

Abstract

The cardiac troponin C (cTnC) gene produces identical transcripts in slow-twitch skeletal muscle and in heart muscle (R. Gahlmann, R. Wade, P. Gunning, and L. Kedes, J. Mol. Biol. 201:379-391, 1988). A separate gene encodes the fast-twitch skeletal muscle troponin C and is not expressed in heart muscle. We have used transient transfection to characterize the regulatory elements responsible for skeletal and cardiac cell-type-specific expression of the human cTnC (HcTnC) gene. At least four separate elements cooperate to confer tissue-specific expression of this gene in differentiated myotubes; a basal promoter (between -61 and -13) augments transcription 9-fold, upstream major regulatory sequences (between -68 and -142 and between -1319 and -4500) augment transcription as much as 39-fold, and at least two enhancer-like elements in the first intron (between +58 and +1028 and between +1029 and +1523) independently augment transcription 4- to 5-fold. These enhancers in the first intron increase myotube-specific chloramphenicol acetyltransferase activity when linked to their own promoter elements or to the heterologous simian virus 40 promoter, and the effects are multiplicative rather than additive. Each of the major myotube regulatory regions is capable of responding directly or indirectly to the myogenic determination factor, MyoD.A MyoD expression vector in 10T1/2 cells induced constructs carrying either the upstream HcTnC promoter elements or the first intron of the gene 300- to 500-fold. Expression was inhibited by cotransfection with Id, a negative regulator of basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors. The basal promoter contains five tandem TGGGC repeats that interact with Sp1 or an Sp1-like factor in nuclear extracts. Mutational analysis of this element demonstrated that two of the five repeat sequences were sufficient to support basal level muscle cell-specific transcription. Whereas the basal promoter is also critical for expression in cardiac myocytes, the elements upstream of -67 appear to play little or no role. Major augmentation of expression in cardiomyocytes is also provided by sequences in the first intron, but these are upstream (between +58 and +1028). The downstream segment of the first intron has no enhancer activity in cardiomyocytes. A specific DNA-protein complex is formed by this C2 cell enhancer with extracts from C2 cells but not cardiomyocytes. These observations suggest that tissue-specific expression of the HcTnC gene is cooperatively regulated by the complex interactions of multiple regulatory elements and that different elements are used to regulate expression in myogenic and cardiac cells.