title: Nuclear factor 1 family members mediate repression of the BK virus late promoter.
abstract: BK virus (BKV) is a member of the polyoma virus family that is ubiquitous in humans. Its 5-kb DNA genome consists of a bidirectional promoter region situated between two temporally regulated coding regions. We mapped the transcription initiation site of the major late promoter (MLP) of the archetype strain BKV(WW) to nt 185. We found that it lies within the sequence TGGN6GCCA, a binding site for members of the nuclear factor 1 (NF1) family of transcription factors. Competition electrophoretic mobility shift and immunoshift assays confirmed that NF1 factors present in nuclear extracts of HeLa and CV-1 cells bind to the BKV-MLP. Because BKV(WW) grew poorly in tissue culture and failed to express detectable levels of RNA in vitro, SV40-BKV chimeric viruses were constructed to investigate the transcriptional function of this NF-1 binding site. These sequence-specific factors repressed transcription in a cell-free system when template copy number was low. This repression could be relieved by the addition in trans of oligonucleotides containing wild-type, but not mutated, NF1-binding site sequences. SV40-BKV chimeric viruses defective in this NF1-binding site overproduced late RNA at early, but not late, times after transfection of CV-1 cells. Finally, transient expression in 293 cells of cDNAs encoding the family members NF1-A4, NF1-C2, and NF1-X2 specifically repressed transcription from the BKV late promoter approximately 3-, 10-, and 10-fold, respectively, in a DNA binding-dependent manner. We conclude that some members of the NF1 family of transcription factors can act as sequence-specific cellular repressors of the BKV-MLP. We propose that titration of these and other cellular repressors by viral genome amplification may be responsible in part for the replication-dependent component of the early-to-late switch in BKV gene expression.
authors.affiliation: McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1599, USA.
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Kraus
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shadley
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Mertz
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001739:BK Virus / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D001665:Binding Sites; D022762:CCAAT-Enhancer-Binding Proteins / Q000502:physiology*; D019556:COS Cells; D002460:Cell Line; D002474:Cell-Free System; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D004586:Electrophoresis; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D051839:NFI Transcription Factors; D009687:Nuclear Proteins; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D013539:Simian virus 40 / Q000235:genetics; D014157:Transcription Factors; D014162:Transfection; D051840:Y-Box-Binding Protein 1
chemical_list: D022762:CCAAT-Enhancer-Binding Proteins; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D051839:NFI Transcription Factors; D009687:Nuclear Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors; D051840:Y-Box-Binding Protein 1; C070856:YBX1 protein, human