Hepatocyte nuclear factor 1 and C/EBP are essential for the activity of the human apolipoprotein B gene second-intron enhancer.

The tissue-specific transcriptional enhancer of the human apolipoprotein B gene contains multiple protein-binding sites spanning 718 bp. Most of the enhancer activity is found in a 443-bp fragment (+621 to +1064) that is located entirely within the second intron of the gene. Within this fragment, a 147-bp region (+806 to +952) containing a single 97-bp DNase I footprint exhibits significant enhancer activity. We now report that this footprint contains four distinct protein-binding sites that have the potential to bind nine distinct liver nuclear proteins. One of these proteins was identified as hepatocyte nuclear factor 1 (HNF-1), which binds with relatively low affinity to the 5' half of a 20-bp palindrome located at the 5' end of the large footprint. A binding site for C/EBP (or one of the related proteins that recognize similar sequences) was identified in the center of the 97-bp footprint. This binding site is coincident or overlaps with the binding sites for five other proteins, two of which appear to be distinct from the C/EBP-related family of proteins. The binding site for a nuclear factor designated protein I is located between the HNF-1 and C/EBP binding sites. Finally, the 3'-most 15 bp of the footprinted sequence contain a binding site for another nuclear protein, which we have called protein II. Mutations that abolish the binding of either HNF-1, protein II, or the C/EBP-related proteins severely reduce enhancer activity. However, deletion experiments demonstrated that neither the HNF-1-binding site alone, nor the combination of binding sites for HNF-1, protein I, and C/EBP, nor the C/EBP-binding site plus the protein II-binding site is sufficient to enhance transcription from a strong apolipoprotein B promoter. Rather, HNF-1 and C/EBP act synergistically with protein II to enhance transcription of the apolipoprotein B gene.