Paranodin, a glycoprotein of neuronal paranodal membranes.

Ranvier nodes are flanked by paranodal regions, at the level of which oligodendrocytes or Schwann cells interact closely with axons. Paranodes play a critical role in the physiological properties of myelinated nerve fibers. Paranodin, a prominent 180 kDa transmembrane neuronal glycoprotein, was purified and cloned from adult rat brain, and found to be highly concentrated in axonal membranes at their junction with myelinating glial cells, in paranodes of central and peripheral nerve fibers. The large extracellular domain of paranodin is related to neurexins, and its short intracellular tail binds protein 4.1, a cytoskeleton-anchoring protein. Paranodin may be a critical component of the macromolecular complex involved in the tight interactions between axons and myelinating glial cells characteristic of the paranodal region.

Cooperative activation of transcription by bovine papillomavirus type 1 E2 can occur over a large distance.

The viral transcriptional factors encoded by the E2 open reading frame bind to the specific DNA sequence elements ACCGNNNNCGGT, allowing activation or repression of transcription. We have analyzed bovine papillomavirus type 1 E2 transactivation using recombinant genes containing E2-binding sites inserted at either 3' or 5' positions relative to the heterologous transcriptional initiation site of the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase gene. In these hybrid plasmids, strong transactivation required the presence of a minimum of two E2-binding sites in close proximity to the promoter or five binding sites at a distance. The presence of a single E2-binding motif 5', close to the initiation site, increased the efficiency of E2 transactivation from a distance in a more-than-additive manner. Since each E2-binding site bound a dimer of the E2 protein, these experiments suggest that transactivation by E2 requires the interaction between several E2 dimers with other essential transcription factors. This interaction may be facilitated by DNA looping, which would bring E2 molecules close to the promoter.

Several different upstream promoter elements can potentiate transactivation by the BPV-1 E2 protein.

The enhancer and upstream promoter regions of RNA polymerase II transcribed genes modulate the rate of transcription initiation and establish specific patterns of gene expression. Both types of region consist of clusters of DNA binding sites for nuclear proteins. To determine how efficiently the same factor can activate transcription when acting as an enhancer or promoter factor, we have studied transactivation by the BPV-1 E2 protein, a papillomavirus transcriptional regulator. By cotransfecting a BPV-1 E2 expression vector and a series of reporter plasmids containing well-defined chimeric promoters we have found that whilst E2 can strongly stimulate complex promoters such as that of the HSV tk gene, it does not efficiently activate constructions containing only a TATA box and initiation site. We show that insertion of upstream promoter elements, but not of spacer DNA, between E2 binding sites and the TATA box greatly increases E2 activation. This effect was observed with more than one type of upstream promoter element, is not related to the strength of the promoter and is unlikely to result from co-operative DNA binding by E2 and the transcription factors tested. These results would suggest that E2 has the properties of an enhancer rather than promoter factor and that in certain cases promoter and enhancer factors may affect different steps in the process of transcriptional activation.