Characterization of the liver X receptor-dependent regulatory mechanism of goat stearoyl-coenzyme A desaturase 1 gene by linoleic acid

Stearoyl-coenzyme A desaturase 1 (SCD1) is a key enzyme in the biosynthesis of palmitoleic and oleic acid. Although the transcriptional regulatory mechanism of SCD1 via polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) has been extensively explored in nonruminants, the existence of such mechanism in ruminant mammary gland remains unknown. In this study, we used goat genomic DNA to clone and sequence a 1,713-bp fragment of the SCD1 5′ flanking region. Deletion assays revealed a core region of the promoter located between −415 and −109 bp upstream of the transcription start site, and contained the highly conserved PUFA response region. An intact PUFA response region was required for the basal transcriptional activity of SCD1. Linoleic acid reduced endogenous expression of SCD1 and sterol regulatory element binding factor-1 (SREBF1) in goat mammary epithelial cells. Further analysis indicated that both the sterol response element (SRE) and the nuclear factor Y (NF-Y) binding site in the SCD1 promoter were responsible for the inhibition effect by linoleic acid, whereas the effect was abrogated once NF-Y was deleted. In addition, SRE and NF-Y were partly responsible for the transcriptional activation induced via the liver X receptor agonist T 4506585 (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO). When goat mammary epithelial cells were cultured with linoleic acid, addition of T 4506585 markedly increased SCD1 transcription in controls, but had no effect on cells with a deleted SRE promoter. These results demonstrated that linoleic acid can regulate SCD1 expression at the transcriptional level through SRE and NF-Y in a liver X receptor-dependent fashion in the goat mammary gland.