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Mol. Cell. Biol., 06 1996, 2670-2677, Vol 16, No. 6
AL Fisher, S Ohsako and M Caudy
Hairy-related proteins include the Drosophila Hairy and Enhancer of Split
proteins and mammalian Hes proteins. These proteins are basic
helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcriptional repressors that control cell fate
decisions such as neurogenesis or myogenesis in both Drosophila
melanogaster and mammals. Hairy-related proteins are site-specific DNA-
binding proteins defined by the presence of both a repressor-specific bHLH
DNA binding domain and a carboxyl-terminal WRPW (Trp-Arg-Pro-Trp) motif.
These proteins act as repressors by binding to DNA sites in target gene
promoters and not by interfering with activator proteins, indicating that
these proteins are active repressors which should therefore have specific
repression domains. Here we show the WRPW motif to be a functional
transcriptional repression domain sufficient to confer active repression to
Hairy-related proteins or a heterologous DNA-binding protein, Ga14. This
motif was previously shown to be necessary for interactions with Groucho, a
genetically defined corepressor for Drosophila Hairy-related proteins. Here
we show that the WRPW motif is sufficient to recruit Groucho or the TLE
mammalian homologs to target gene promoters. We also show that Groucho and
TLE proteins actively repress transcription when directly bound to a target
gene promoter and identify a novel, highly conserved transcriptional
repression domain in these proteins. These results directly demonstrate
that Groucho family proteins are active transcriptional corepressors for
Hairy-related proteins and are recruited by the 4-amino acid
protein-protein interaction domain, WRPW.
Copyright © 1996, American Society for Microbiology
The WRPW motif of the hairy-related basic helix-loop-helix repressor proteins acts as a 4-amino-acid transcription repression and protein- protein interaction domain
Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Cornell University Medical College, New York, New York 10021, USA.
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