Regulation of the Human Ghrelin Promoter Activity by Transcription Factors, NF-κB and Nkx2.2

Figure 5

Effects of transcription factors on human ghrelin promoter activity. The vectors used for the experiments are (a) pCNV, (b) pEF-BOS, (c) pcGN, and (d) and (e) pcDNA3.1. The transcription factors are (a) c-myc, USF, and TEF-3, (b) RelA (NF-κB (p65)), c-jun, c-fos, and v-fos, (c) Oct-1, Oct-2, (d) HNF-1α, HNF-1β, E1k-1, and mmad, and (e) Nkx2.2, Pax6, Pax4, ZFP106, and MKRN3. In transfection experiments, 2 μg of the human ghrelin promoter (−2000/+1), the firefly luciferase reporter plasmid, and 20 ng of pRL-CMV were cotransfected with 25 ng of each transcription factor vector or an empty vector. Promoter activity was normalized by Renilla luciferase activity of the pRL-CMV vector. Relative luciferase activity was expressed as the ratio of luciferase activity cotransfected with each expression vector versus pGL3 basic vector. The data represent the mean ± SE for triplicate samples. Asterisks indicate the differences between each group ().

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