... site synergy is poorly understood. Here, we identify a bona fide cardiac-specific Prkaa2 enhancer that is synergistically activated by homotypic MEF2 binding sites. We show that two MEF2 sites in the enhancer function cooperatively due to bridging of the MEF2C-bound sites by the SAP domain-containing...

... of Biologists Ltd 2016 Summary: In the developing mouse anterior second heart field, the transcription factor MEF2C directly controls expression of the Nodal co-receptor Cripto to regulate outflow tract alignment. MEF2 Tdgf1 Cripto Enhancer Heart development Mouse Congenital heart...

... Lightning Chemiluminescent Reagent (Perkin Elmer). In vitro -translated mouse MEF2A (rabbit reticulocyte lysate; Promega) or nuclear extracts from C2C12 myotubes were used for gel shift assays. The mutant MEF2 site was generated in the same manner as the mutant Gtl2 reporter. Supershift assays...

...Zhimin Chen; Shanshan Liang; Ying Zhao; Zhe Han Mef2 is the key transcription factor for muscle development and differentiation in Drosophila . It activates hundreds of downstream target genes, including itself. Precise control of Mef2 levels is essential for muscle development as different Mef2...

... expression is the conserved transcription factor Mef2. In vivo, Mef2 is essential for the development of the Drosophila larval musculature: Mef2 -null embryos have no differentiated somatic muscle. By contrast, a similar phenotype has not been seen in analyses of the function of Mef2 genes in other examples...

... and insects, the transcription factor Mef2 plays a pivotal role in muscle differentiation; however, it is also an important regulator of neuron differentiation and survival. In the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis , an organism that lacks mesoderm but has muscles and neurons, Mef2 ( Nvmef2 ) has been...

... sites and a single essential MEF2 site. We demonstrate that Mef2c is a direct transcriptional target of SOX10 and MEF2 via this evolutionarily conserved enhancer. Furthermore, we show that SOX10 and MEF2C physically interact and function cooperatively to activate the Mef2c gene in a feed-forward...

... that a newly identified gene, lame duck ( lmd ), has an essential regulatory role in the specification and function of fusion-competent myoblasts. Embryos that lack lmd function show a loss of expression of two key differentiation and fusion genes, Mef2 and sticks-and-stones , in fusion-competent myoblasts...

...Da-Zhi Wang; M. Renee Valdez; John McAnally; James Richardson; Eric N. Olson Members of the MEF2 family of transcription factors are upregulated during skeletal muscle differentiation and cooperate with the MyoD family of myogenic basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors to control...

...Francisco J. Naya; Chuanzhen Wu; James A. Richardson; Paul Overbeek; Eric N. Olson ABSTRACT The four members of the MEF2 family of MADS-box transcription factors, MEF2-A, MEF2-B, MEF2-C and MEF2-D, are expressed in overlapping patterns in developing muscle and neural cell lineages during...

...Diane G. Edmondson; Gary E. Lyons; James F. Martin; Eric N. Olson ABSTRACT Members of the MEF2 family of transcription factors bind a conserved A/T-rich sequence in the control regions of many skeletal and cardiac muscle genes. To begin to assess the roles of the different Mef2 genes in the control...

... muscle-specific genes. Among the participants in this process is the myocyte-specific enhancer factor 2 (MEF2) family of tissue-restricted transcription factors. These factors, which share a highly conserved DNA-binding domain including a MADS box, are essential for the expression of multiple muscle...