Construction and functional analysis of novel dominant-negative mutant of human SOX18 protein

SOX18 transcription factor plays important roles in a range of biological processes such as vasculogenesis, hair follicle development, lymphangiogenesis, atherosclerosis, and angiogenesis. In this paper we present the generation of a novel SOX18 dominant-negative mutant (SOX18DN) encoding truncated SOX18 protein that lacks a trans -activation domain. We show that both wild-type SOX18 (SOX18 wt ) and truncated human SOX18 proteins are able to bind to their consensus sequence in vitro . Functional analysis confirmed that SOX18 wt has potent trans -activation properties, while SOX18DN displays dominant-negative effect. We believe that these SOX18 wt and SOX18DN expression constructs could be successfully used for further characterization of the function of this protein.