Figure 5

Activin A induction of ovine FSHBLuc with minimal promoters. (A) Induction of wild type ovine FSHBLuc by activin A was compared to induction of ovine FSHB(TK)Luc with a substitute thymidine kinase promoter (TK) placed between -40/+3 bp of ovine FSHBLuc. Induction of the parent TK construct is also shown. (B) Induction of wild type ovine FSHBLuc by activin A is compared to induction of ovine FSHB(rPRL)Luc with a substitute rat prolactin minimal promoter placed between -40/+3 bp of ovine FSHBLuc. Induction by these constructs was then compared to induction of the rat promoter construct lacking sequences known to be important for activin A induction Δ-175/-39 ovine FSHB(rPRL)Luc. The next construct contained the minimal rat prolactin promoter plus ovine 3'exon/intron 1, but lacked all 5' ovine sequence except the region between -200/-39 bp known to be important for activin A action (Rep 10). Finally, induction with activin A was measured for the original rat prolactin construct. The data in Figure 5 are plotted as fold-induction since basal expression with the TK and rPRL promoters was increased 20- and 8-fold, respectively, compared to basal expression with the wild type promoter. Bars represent the mean ± sem of results from quadruplicate cultures from a single and representative experiment. Means with different letters were statistically different from wild type induction (fold-induction). ANOVA and Tukey's multiple comparison analyses were used to determine significance where P ≤ 0.05.