Amanda L Tatler, Anthony Habgood, Joanne Porte, Alison E John, Anastasios Stavrou, Emily Hodge, Cheryl Kerama-Likoko, Shelia M Violette, Paul H Weinreb, Alan J Knox, Geoffrey Laurent, Helen Parfrey, Paul John Wolters, William Wallace, Siegfried Alberti, Alfred Nordheim, Gisli Jenkins
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive fibrotic lung disease with high mortality. Active TGFβ1 is considered central to the pathogenesis of IPF. A major mechanism of TGFβ1 activation in the lung involves the epithelially restricted αvβ6 integrin. Expression of the αvβ6 integrin is dramatically increased in IPF. How αvβ6 integrin expression is regulated in the pulmonary epithelium is unknown. Here we identify a region in the β6 subunit gene (ITGB6) promoter acting to markedly repress basal gene transcription, which responds to both the Ets domain-containing protein Elk1 (Elk1) and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR)...
April 29, 2016: Journal of Biological Chemistry