Cloning and analysis of the promoter activity of the human prostatic acid phosphatase gene

Human prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP) has been proposed to be a prostate-epithelium differentiation antigen and its expression can be regulated by androgen. Nevertheless, the regulatory mechanism at the molecular level is not completely understood. In this communication, we demonstrated the tissue-specific expression of PAP in the normal prostate epithelium. Furthermore, results of nuclear run-on experiments indicated that androgen could regulate the transcriptional rate of the PAP gene. This mode of regulation was modulated by cell density. To investigate the transcriptional regulation, we cloned and characterized a 1.4-kilobase (kb) fragment of DNA that flanks the 5@? region of the PAP gene from LNCaP human prostate carcinoma cells. The results demonstrated that this 1.4-kb DNA fragment can drive a chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene expression in LNCaP cells. Also, the promoter activity was inversely correlated with the growth of those cells.