The E motifs of the immunoglobulin heavy-chain gene enhancer bind ubiquitously expressed proteins of the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family. These elements work together with other, more tissue-restricted elements to produce B-cell-specific enhancer activity by presently undefined combinatorial mechanisms. We found that E2 contributed to transcription activation in B cells only when the E3 site was intact, providing the first evidence for functional interactions between bHLH proteins. In vitro assays showed that bHLH zipper proteins binding to E3 enhanced Ets-1 binding to A. One of the consequences of this protein-protein interaction was to facilitate binding of a second bHLH protein, E47, to the E2 site, thereby generating a three-protein-DNA complex. Furthermore, transcriptional synergy between bHLH and bHLH zipper factors also required an intermediate ETS protein, which may bridge the transcription activation domains of the bHLH factors. Our observations define an unusual form of cooperation between bHLH and ETS proteins and suggest mechanisms by which tissue-restricted and ubiquitous factors combine to generate tissue-specific enhancer activity.The immunoglobulin (Ig) heavy-chain gene enhancer is a cell-specific transcription regulatory sequence. Located in the J H -C intron, it is necessary for the expression of a rearranged IgH gene in transfection as well as transgenic assays. Moreover, when taken out of its normal context, the enhancer is sufficient to target a heterologous transgene (1,14,18,27) for expression at the appropriate differentiation stage in the Blymphocyte lineage. In addition to activating transcription from a V H gene promoter that has recombined into the C locus, this enhancer has also been implicated in the initiation of V(D)J recombination at the IgH locus. This is based on two experimental observations: transgenic recombination substrates were shown to be activated by the enhancer (7), and genetic deletion of the endogenous enhancer was shown to suppress IgH recombination (4, 31). At present, it is not clear whether the recombination activation and transcription activation properties of the enhancer are directly related; however, it is likely that enhancer-mediated chromatin reorganization resulting in increased accessibility of the IgH locus to polymerases and recombinases is important for both processes.B-cell-specific enhancer function is determined by multiple trans-acting nuclear proteins that bind to specific sites within the enhancer (6,19). Proteins that bind to the enhancer can be broadly classified into two categories: those that are more restricted in their tissue distribution, such as A, B, and octamer binding proteins, and those that are ubiquitously expressed in most cell types, such as the E1, E2, E3, and E5 binding proteins. However, no enhancer binding protein identified to date has an expression pattern that correlates perfectly with the cells in which the IgH gene is expressed. Based on the expression pattern of proteins binding to the A and B sites, we have previ...