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¹ Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology,
² Institute Growth and Development (GROW), University Hospital of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands

(Requests for offprints should be addressed to A Romano; Email: a.romano{at}og.unimaas.nl)

(D-C Fischer is now at Department of Pediatrics, Experimental Nephrology, Rostock University Medical Centre, Rostock, Germany)

The human progesterone receptor (PR) is a ligand-dependent transcription factor and two isoforms, (PRA and PRB), can be distinguished. PROGINS, a PR polymorphic variant, affects PRA and PRB and acts as a risk-modulating factor in several gynaecological disorders. Little is known about the functional consequences of this variant. Here, we characterise the properties of PROGINS with respect to transcription, mRNA maturation, protein activity and proliferation. PROGINS is characterised by a 320 bp PV/HS-1 Alu insertion in intron G and two point mutations, V660L in exon 4 and H770H (silent substitution) in exon 5. The Alu element contains a half oestrogen-response element/Sp1-binding site (Alu-ERE/Sp1), which acts as an in-cis intronic enhancer leading to increased transcription of the PROGINS allele in response to 17ß-oestradiol. Moreover, Alu insertions in the human genome are frequently methylated. Our data indicate that the PROGINS-Alu does not affect gene transcription due to DNA methylation. However, the Alu element reduced the stability of the PROGINS transcript compared with the CP allele and does not generate splice variants. The amino acid substitution (V600L) in exon 4 leads to differences in PR phosphorylation and degradation in the two PR variants upon ligand binding, most likely as a result of differences in the three-dimensional structures of the two PR variants. As a consequence, the PR-L660 (PROGINS) variant (1) displays decreased transactivation activity in a luciferase reporter system and (2) is less efficient in opposing cell proliferation in hamster ovarian cells expressing human PRA, when compared with the PR-V660 (most common variant). Taken together, our results indicate that the PROGINS variant of PR is less responsive to progestin compared with the most common PR because of (i) reduced amounts of gene transcript and (ii) decreased protein activity.

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				P. D'Amora, T. T. Maciel, R. Tambellini, M. A. Mori, J. B. Pesquero, H. Sato, M. J. B. C. Girao, I. D. C. Guerreiro da Silva, and E. Schor Disrupted Cell Cycle Control in Cultured Endometrial Cells from Patients with Endometriosis Harboring the Progesterone Receptor Polymorphism PROGINS Am. J. Pathol., July 1, 2009; 175(1): 215 - 224. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]