Molecular characterization of the murine homologue of the DC-derived protein DC-SCRIPT

Abstract: Dendritic cell-specific transcript (DC-SCRIPT) is a putative DC zinc (Zn) finger-type transcription factor described recently in humans. Here, we illustrate that DC-SCRIPT is highly con-served in evolution and report the initial charac-terization of the murine ortholog of DC-SCRIPT, which is also preferentially expressed in DC as shown by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and its distribution resembles that of its human counterpart. Studies undertaken in human embryonic kidney 293 cells depict its nuclear lo-calization and reveal that the Zn finger domain of the protein is mainly responsible for nuclear im-port. The human and the mouse genes are located in syntenic chromosomal regions and exhibit a sim-ilar genomic organization with numerous common transcription factor-binding sites in their promoter region, including sites for many factors implicated in haematopoiesis and DC biology, such as Gfi, GATA-1, Spi-B, and c-Rel. Taken together, these data show that DC-SCRIPT is well-conserved in evolution and that the mouse homologue is more than 80 % homologous to the human protein. Therefore, mouse models can be used to elucidate the function of this novel DC marker. J. Leukoc