Sequence of the human GATA-1 promoter.

The hematopoietic-specific transcription factor GATA-1 participates in control of erythroid-expressed genes (1) and is required for erythroid development in vivo (2). Recently Nicolis et al. (3) reported human GATA-1 gene promoter sequences. Homology to mouse GATA-1 sequences (2) was noted only in the proximal promoter and in an upstream region containing a double GATA-site implicated in autoregulation (4). Their sequence of the human GATA-1 promoter differs from that we have obtained with respect to the omission of 121 bp, which display substantial similarity with the mouse (Figure 1, bracketed region). Confirmation that this region is indeed part of the promoter was achieved by PCR (Figure 2) using two independent human GATA-1 genomic clones (lanes 1, 2, 8, 9) and total human DNA samples (lanes 3 -7) . The revised human promoter sequence brings the two mammalian sequences into closer alignment (Figure 2), and predicts strong functional similarities between human and mouse GATA-1 regulatory regions.