Structure and Regulation of the Mouse ing1 Gene

The human ING1 gene encodes nuclear protein p33(ING1), previously shown to cooperate with p53 in cell growth control (Garkavtsev, I., Grigorian, I. A., Ossovskaya, V. S., Chernov, M. V., Chumakov, P. M., and Gudkov, A. V. (1998) Nature 391, 295-298). p33(ING1) belongs to a small family of proteins from human, mouse, and yeast of approximately the same size that show significant similarity to one another within the C-terminal PHD finger domain and also contain an additional N-terminal region with subtle but reliably detectable sequence conservation. Mouse ing1 is transcribed from three differently regulated promoters localized within a 4-kilobase pair region of genomic DNA. The resulting transcripts share a long common region encoded by a common exon and differ in their 5'-exon sequences. Two transcripts are translated into the same protein of 185 amino acids, the mouse equivalent of the human p33(ING1), while the third transcript encodes a longer protein that has 94 additional N-terminal amino acids. Overexpression of the longer protein interferes with the accumulation of p53 protein and activation of p53-responsive promoters after DNA damage. Between the two products of ing1, only the longer one forms a complex with p53 detectable by immunoprecipitation. These results indicate that a single gene, ing1, encodes both p53-suppressing and p53-activating proteins that are regulated by alternative promoters.