FIGURE 1.

AQP4 gene organization adapted from Umenishi and Verkman (21). A, exons (0–4) are represented as boxes (not drawn to scale). Untranslated regions are shown as white boxes. Coding regions are shaded gray. A black box represents the sequence that additionally codes for the long AQP4 M1 transcript in exon 1. B, predicted binding of miRNAs to promoter region of AQP4 M1.The figure contains the promoter sequence of AQP4 M1 until the start codon (underlined italics). The first nucleotide of the AQP4 M1 promoter is marked with an asterisk. The transcription initiation site is marked with +1. Potential binding regions of five of the highly expressed miRNAs in human astrocytes are shown (bold). The seed regions are shaded. The first nucleotides of the deletion constructs are shown in bold and double underlined. The E box regions (E1 and E2) identified by Umenishi and Verkman (21) are also shown (underlined).