The divergent murine homeo box gene Hlx is expressed in restricted hematopoietic cell types and, during embryogenesis, prominently in visceral mesenchyme of the developing liver, gall bladder, and gut. Targeted disruption of the gene has now established that it plays a key role in visceral organogenesis. Embryos homozygous for the mutation died around embryonic day 15 with anemia and severe hypoplasia of the liver and gut. Liver ontogeny commenced normally with formation of the liver diverticulum and differentiation of hepatocytes, but the organ failed to expand and reached only 3% of normal size. The apparent liver hypoplasia was not associated with a notable increase in apoptotic cells. Gut development also began normally, but the intestines failed to undergo extensive elongation and looping and reached only a quarter of normal length. The anemia resulted from a deficiency in the fetal form of hematopoiesis, which occurs in the liver, but no intrinsic defect in Hlx-/-hematopoietic cells was observed in vitro, and liver-derived Hlx-/-hematopoietic stem cells that were transplanted to irradiated normal mice could fully reconstitute hematopoiesis. The impaired fetal hematopoiesis therefore reflects insufficient support function provided by the minute liver. Hlx is normally expressed in visceral mesenchyme lying adjacent to the developing liver and gut epithelia affected by the mutation, but not in the epithelia themselves. Hence, Hlx regulates a mesenchymal-epithelial interaction that drives a vital growth phase in visceral organogenesis. Moreover, because mutation of H/x blocked liver growth but not its specification, early morphogenesis, or differentiation, development of this organ appears to occur by step-wise inductive interactions under separate genetic control.

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The T lymphocyte-specific enhancers of the murine and human Interleukin 2 (Il-2) genes harbour several binding sites for ubiquitous transcription factors. All these sites for the binding of AP-1, NF-kB or Oct-1 are non-canonical sites, i.e. they differ in one or a few base pairs from consensus sequences for the optimal binding of these factors. Although the factors bind weakly to these sites, the latter are functionally important because their mutation to non-binding sites results in a decrease of inducible activity of the Il-2 enhancer. Conversion of three sites to canonical binding sites of Octamer factors, AP-1 and NF-kB results in a drastic increase in enhancer activity and the induction of the Il-2 enhancer in non-T cells, such as B cell lines, murine L cells and human HeLa cells. The introduction of two or three canonical sites into the enhancer leads to a further increase of its activity. Il-2 enhancer induction is also observed in B cells when the concentration of AP-1 and Oct factors increases as a result of cotransfections with FosB and Octamer expression plasmids. When Il-2 enhancer constructs carrying canonical factor binding sites were injected into Xenopus oocytes the strong binding of ubiquitous factors substantially overcomes the silencing effect of negatively acting factors present in resting primary T lymphocytes. These results suggest a fine-tuned interplay between ubiquitous and lymphoid-specific factors binding to and transactivating the Il-2 enhancer and show that the binding affinity of ubiquitous factors to the enhancer contributes to its cell-type specific activity. Moreover, we believe that a dramatic increase of transcriptional activity brought about by single point mutations at strategic important factor binding sites may also have relevance to the activation of nuclear oncogenes.

The inducible, T cell-specific enhancers of murine and human Interleukin 2 (Il-2) genes contain the kB-like sequence GGGATTTCACC as an essential cis-acting enhancer motif. When cloned in multiple copies this so-called TCEd (distal T cell element) acts as an inducible proto-enhancer element in E14 T lymphoma cells, but not in HeLa cells. In extracts of induced, Il-2 secreting El4 cells three individual protein factors bind to TCEd DNA. The binding of the most prominent factor, named TCF-1 (T cell factor 1), is correlated with the proto-enhancer activity of TCEd. TCF-1 consists of two polypeptides of about 50 kD and 105 kD; the former seems to be related to the 50 kD polypeptide of NF-kB. Purified NF-kB is also able to bind to the TCEd, but TCF-1 binds stronger than NF-kB to TCEd DNA. The conversion of the TCEd to a 'perfect' NF-kB binding site leads to a tighter binding of NF-kB to TCEd DNA and, as a functional consequence, to the activity of the 'converted' TCEd motifs in HeLa cells. Thus, the substitution of the underlined A residue to a C within the GGGATTTCACC motif abolishes its T cell-restricted activity and leads to its functioning in both El4 cells and HeLa cells. These results indicate that lymphocyte-specific factors binding to the TCEd are involved in the control of T cell specific-transcription of the Il-2 gene.

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