RT Journal
A1 Lee, Maxwell P.
A1 Howcroft, Kevin
A1 Kotekar, Aparna
A1 Yang, Howard H.
A1 Buetow, Kenneth H.
A1 Singer, Dinah S.
T1 ATG deserts define a novel core promoter subclass
JF Genome Research 
JO Genome Research 
YR 2005 
FD September 01 
VO 15 
IS 9 
SP 1189 
OP 1197 
DO 10.1101/gr.3873705 
UL http://genome.cshlp.org/content/15/9/1189.abstract 
AB The MHC class I gene, PD1, has neither functional TATAA nor Initiator (Inr) elements in its core promoter and initiates transcription at multiple, dispersed sites over an extended region in vitro. Here, we define a novel core promoter feature that supports regulated transcription through selective transcription start site (TSS) usage. We demonstrate that TSS selection is actively regulated and context dependent. Basal and activated transcriptions initiate from largely nonoverlapping TSS regions. Transcripts derived from multiple TSS encode a single protein, due to the absence of any ATG triplets within ∼430 bp upstream of the major transcription start site. Thus, the PD1 core promoter is embedded within an “ATG desert.” Remarkably, extending this analysis genome-wide, we find that ATG deserts define a novel promoter subclass. They occur nonrandomly, are significantly associated with non-TATAA promoters that use multiple TSS, independent of the presence of CpG islands (CGI). We speculate that ATG deserts may provide a core promoter platform upon which complex upstream regulatory signals can be integrated, targeting multiple TSS whose products encode a single protein.