Abstract
The Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene is the largest and one of the most complex genes known to date. Four 5′ promoters regulate, in a cell-type-specific manner, the expression of full-length gene product, the protein called dystrophin. In addition, four internal promoters regulate the expression of smaller proteins which lack important parts of dystrophin, and probably have different functions.
References
- Bar S, Barnea E, Levy Z, et al. (1990) A novel product of the Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene which greatly differs from the known isoforms in its structure and tissue distribution. Biochemical Journal 272: 557–560.
- Byers TJ, Lidov HG and Kunkel LM (1993) An alternative dystrophin transcript specific to peripheral nerve. Nature Genetics 4: 77–81.
- D'Souza VN, Nguyen TM, Morris GE, et al. (1995) A novel dystrophin isoform is required for normal retinal electrophyiology. Human Molecular Genetics 4: 837–842.
- Gorecki DC, Monaco AP, Derry JM, et al. (1992) Expression of four alternative dystrophin transcripts in brain regions regulated by different promoters. Human Molecular Genetics 1: 505–510.
- Koenig M, Monaco AP and Kunkel LM (1988) The complete sequence of dystrophin predicts a rod-shaped cytoskeletal protein. Cell 53: 219–226.
- Lidov HG, Selig S and Kunkel LM (1995) Dp140: a novel 140 kDa CNS transcript from the dystrophin locus. Human Molecular Genetics 4: 329–335.
- Neuman S, Kaban A, Volk T, Yaffe D and Nudel U (2001) The dystrophin/utrophin homologues in drosophila and sea urchin. Gene 263: 17–29.
- Nishio H, Takeshima Y, Narita N, et al. (1994) Identification of a novel first exon in the human dystrophin gene and of a new promoter located more than 500 kb upstream of the nearest known promoter. Journal of Clinical Investigations 94: 1037–1042.
- Nudel U, Zuk D, Einat P, et al. (1989) Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene product is not identical in muscle and brain. Nature 337: 76–78.
- Tinsley JM, Blake DJ and Davies KE (1993) Apo-dystrophin-3: a 2.2 kb transcript from the DMD locus encoding the dystrophin glycoprotein binding site. Human Molecular Genetics 2: 521–524.
Further Reading
- Ahn AH and Kunkel LM (1993) The structural and functional diversity of dystrophin. Nature Genetics 3: 283–291.
- Ayoubi TA and Van De Ven WJ (1996) Regulation of gene expression by alternative promoters. FASEB Journal 10: 453–460.
- Barnea E, Zuk D, Simantov R, Nudel U and Yaffe D (1990) Specificity of expression of the muscle and brain dystrophin gene promoters in muscle and brain cells. Neuron 5: 881–888.
- Boyce FM, Beggs AH, Feener C and Kunkel LM (1991) Dystrophin is transcribed in brain from a distant upstream promoter. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 88: 1276–1280.
- Campbell KP (1995) Three muscular dystrophies: loss of cytoskeleton-extracellular matrix linkage. Cell 80: 675–679.
- Gilgenkrantz H, Hugnot JP, Lambert M, et al. (1992) Positive and negative regulatory DNA elements including a CCArGG box are involved in the cell type specific expression of the human muscle dystrophin gene. Journal of Biological Chemistry 267: 10823–10830.
- Klamut HJ, Gangopadhyay SB, Worton RG and Ray PN (1990) Molecular and functional analysis of the muscle-specific promoter region of the Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene. Molecular and Cellular Biology 10: 193–205.
- Mehler MF (2000) Brain dystrophin, neurogenetics and mental retardation. Brain Research 32: 277–307.
- Muntoni F, Cau M, Ganau A, et al. (1993) Brief report: deletion of the dystrophin muscle-promoter region associated with X-linked dilated cardiomyopathy. New England Journal of Medicine 329: 921–925.
- Ozawa E, Yoshida M, Suzuki A, et al. (1995) Dystrophin-associated proteins in muscular dystrophy. Human Molecular Genetics 4: 1711–1716.
- Sarig R, Mezger-Lallemand V, Gitelman I, et al. (1999) Targeted inactivation of Dp71, the major non-muscle product of the DMD gene: differential activity of the Dp71 promoter during development. Human Molecular Genetics 8: 1–10.
- Schibler U and Sierra F (1987) Alternative promoters in developmental gene expression. Annual Review of Genetics 21: 237–257.
- Yaffe D, Nudel U, Greenberg D, Lederfein D and Rapaport D (1996) The DMD gene: search for function of its nonmuscle products. Cellular Pharmacology 3: 331–336.
Web Links
- Dystrophin (muscular dystrophy, Duchenne and Becker types) (DMD); Locus ID: 1756. LocusLink: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/LocusLink/LocRpt.cgi?l=1756
- Dystrophin (muscular dystrophy, Duchenne and Becker types) (DMD); MIM number: 300377. OMIM: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Omim/dispmim?300377