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Molecular and Cellular Biology, March 1999, p. 2080-2087, Vol. 19, No. 3
0270-7306/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

A Conserved Motif in Goosecoid Mediates Groucho-Dependent Repression in Drosophila Embryos

Gerardo Jiménez,1,* C. Peter Verrijzer,2 and David Ish-Horowicz1

Developmental Genetics1 and Gene Expression Control2 Laboratories, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London WC2A 3PX, England

Received 15 October 1998/Returned for modification 19 November 1998/Accepted 3 December 1998

Surprisingly small peptide motifs can confer critical biological functions. One example is the WRPW tetrapeptide present in the Hairy family of transcriptional repressors, which mediates recruitment of the Groucho (Gro) corepressor to target promoters. We recently showed that Engrailed (En) is another repressor that requires association with Gro for its function. En lacks a WRPW motif; instead, it contains another short conserved sequence, the En homology region 1 (eh1)/GEH motif, that is likely to play a role in tethering Gro to the promoter. Here, we characterize a repressor domain from the Goosecoid (Gsc) developmental regulator that includes an eh1/GEH-like motif. We demonstrate that this domain (GscR) mediates efficient repression in Drosophila blastoderm embryos and that repression by GscR requires Gro function. GscR and Gro interact in vitro, and the eh1/GEH motif is necessary and sufficient for the interaction and for in vivo repression. Because WRPW- and eh1/GEH-like motifs are present in different proteins and in many organisms, the results suggest that interactions between short peptides and Gro represent a widespread mechanism of repression. Finally, we investigate whether Gro is part of a stable multiprotein complex in the nucleus. Our results indicate that Gro does not form stable associations with other proteins but that it may be able to assemble into homomultimeric complexes.

* Corresponding author. Present address: CID-CSIC, Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Phone: 34-3-400 6100, ext. 264. Fax: 34-3-204 5904. E-mail: gjcbmc{at}cid.csic.es.

Molecular and Cellular Biology, March 1999, p. 2080-2087, Vol. 19, No. 3
0270-7306/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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