Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Mol Cell Biol, August 1998, p. 4471-4487, Vol. 18, No. 8
Department of Pathology & Molecular Biology
Program, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver,
Colorado 802621;
DIBIT, San Raffaele
Scientific Institute, 20132 Milan, Italy2;
and
Ligand Pharmaceuticals, San Diego, California
921213
Received 6 October 1997/Returned for modification 8 November
1997/Accepted 4 May 1998
We previously reported that the chromatin high-mobility group
protein 1 (HMG-1) enhances the sequence-specific DNA binding activity
of progesterone receptor (PR) in vitro, thus providing the first
evidence that HMG-1 may have a coregulatory role in steroid
receptor-mediated gene transcription. Here we show that HMG-1 and the
highly related HMG-2 stimulate DNA binding by other steroid receptors,
including estrogen, androgen, and glucocorticoid receptors, but have no
effect on DNA binding by several nonsteroid nuclear receptors,
including retinoid acid receptor (RAR), retinoic X receptor (RXR), and
vitamin D receptor (VDR). As highly purified recombinant full-length
proteins, all steroid receptors tested exhibited weak binding affinity
for their optimal palindromic hormone response elements (HREs), and the
addition of purified HMG-1 or -2 substantially increased their affinity
for HREs. Purified RAR, RXR, and VDR also exhibited little to no
detectable binding to their cognate direct repeat HREs but, in contrast
to results with steroid receptors, the addition of HMG-1 or HMG-2 had
no stimulatory effect. Instead, the addition of purified RXR enhanced RAR and VDR DNA binding through a heterodimerization mechanism and
HMG-1 or HMG-2 had no further effect on DNA binding by RXR-RAR or
RXR-VDR heterodimers. HMG-1 and HMG-2 (HMG-1/-2) themselves do not bind
to progesterone response elements, but in the presence of PR they were
detected as part of an HMG-PR-DNA ternary complex. HMG-1/-2 can also
interact transiently in vitro with PR in the absence of DNA; however,
no direct protein interaction was detected with VDR. These results,
taken together with the fact that PR can bend its target DNA and that
HMG-1/-2 are non-sequence-specific DNA binding proteins that recognize
DNA structure, suggest that HMG-1/-2 are recruited to the PR-DNA
complex by the combined effect of transient protein interaction and DNA
bending. In transient-transfection assays, coexpression of HMG-1 or
HMG-2 increased PR-mediated transcription in mammalian cells by as much
as 7- to 10-fold without altering the basal promoter activity of target
reporter genes. This increase in PR-mediated gene activation by
coexpression of HMG-1/-2 was observed in different cell types and with
different target promoters, suggesting a generality to the functional
interaction between HMG-1/-2 and PR in vivo. Cotransfection of HMG-1
also increased reporter gene activation mediated by other steroid
receptors, including glucocorticoid and androgen receptors, but it had
a minimal influence on VDR-dependent transcription in vivo. These results support the conclusion that HMG-1/-2 are coregulatory proteins
that increase the DNA binding and transcriptional activity of the
steroid hormone class of receptors but that do not functionally interact with certain nonsteroid classes of nuclear receptors.
0270-7306/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
High-Mobility Group Chromatin Proteins 1 and 2 Functionally Interact with Steroid Hormone Receptors To Enhance Their
DNA Binding In Vitro and Transcriptional Activity in Mammalian
Cells
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: University of
Colorado Health Science Center, Department of Pathology
B216, 4200 East Ninth Ave., Denver, CO. 80262. Phone: (303) 315-5416. Fax: (303) 315-6721. E-mail: edwards_d{at}defiance.UCHSC.edu.
This article has been cited by other articles:
| J. Bacteriol. | J. Virol. | Eukaryot. Cell |
|---|
| Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. | Clin. Vaccine Immunol. | All ASM Journals |
|---|