Members of the nuclear factor κB family transactivate the murine c-myb gene

Expression of the c-myb proto-oncogene is primarily detected in normal tissue and tumor cell lines of immature hematopoietic origin, and the down- regulation of c-myb expression is associated with hematopoietic maturation. Cell lines that represent mature, differentiated hematopoietic cell types contain 10-100-fold less c-myb mRNA than immature hematopoietic cell types. Differences in steady-state c-myb mRNA levels appear to be primarily maintained by a conditional block to transcription elongation that occurs in the first intron of the gene. The block to transcription elongation has been mapped, using nuclear run-on analysis, to a region of DNA sequence that is highly conserved between mouse and man. Two sets of DNA-protein interactions, flanking the site of the block to transcription elongation, were detected that exhibited DNA-binding activities that strongly correlated with low steady-state c-myb mRNA levels. Several criteria demonstrated that members of the nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) family of transcription factors were involved in the DNA-protein interactions identified in these two sets. Surprisingly, cotransfection experiments demonstrated that coexpression of members of the NF-κB family, specifically p50 with p65 and p65 with c-Rel, transactivated a c-myb/chloramphenicol acetyltransferase reporter construct that contained 5'flanking sequences, exon I, intron I, and exon II of the c-myb gene. Transactivation by these heterodimer combinations was dependent on regions of the c-myb first intron containing the NF-κB-binding sites. These findings suggest that NF-κB family members may be involved in either modifying the efficiency of transcription attenuation or acting as an enhancer-like activity to increase transcription initiation. Thus, the regulation of c-myb transcription may be quite complex, and members of the NF-κB family likely play an important role in this regulation