common promoter elements in odorant and vomeronasal receptor genes常见的子元素有气味的犁鼻骨和受体基因.pdfVIP

Common Promoter Elements in Odorant and Vomeronasal Receptor Genes 1 1,2¤ ´ 1 1 Jussara S. Michaloski , Pedro A. F. Galante , Maıra H. Nagai , Lucia Armelin-Correa , Ming-Shan Chien3, Hiroaki Matsunami3, Bettina Malnic 1* ´ ´ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ 1 Departamento de Bioquımica, Instituto de Quımica, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2 Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 3 Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America Abstract In mammals, odorants and pheromones are detected by hundreds of odorant receptors (ORs) and vomeronasal receptors (V1Rs and V2Rs) expressed by sensory neurons that are respectively located in the main olfactory epithelium and in the vomeronasal organ. Even though these two olfactory systems are functionally and anatomically separate, their sensory neurons show a common mechanism of receptor gene regulation: each neuron expresses a single receptor gene from a single allele. The mechanisms underlying OR and VR gene expression remain unclear. Here we investigated if OR and V1R genes share common sequences in their promoter regions. We conducted a comparative analysis of promoter regions of 39 mouse V1R genes and found motifs that are common to a large number of promoters. We then searched mouse OR promoter regions for motifs that resemble the ones found in the V1R promoters. We identified motifs that are present in both the V1R and OR promoter regions. Some of th