Figure 4.

Mutation of NFI binding site on the MT-I promoter that abrogates binding of NFI protein does not abolish the repressor action of NFI proteins on the promoter. HepG2 cells were transfected with either pMT-Luc, pMRE-c′mut, or pNFImut (1.5 μg), pRLTK (0.15 μg), CMV control vector (not shown), or CMV vector expressing NFI-C (1.5 μg). Reporter plasmids are described in Materials and Methods. Transfected cells were either treated with or without 10 μM cadmium sulfate 6 h before harvesting. Ratio of reporter gene activity to that of the internal control is presented in the bar diagram. This is representative of two independent experiments with triplicate assays.