MCB
Home Help [Feedback] [For Subscribers] [Archive] [Search] [Contents]
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowReprints and Permissions
Right arrow Copyright Information
Right arrow Books from ASM Press
Right arrow MicrobeWorld
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Escher, D.
Right arrow Articles by Schaffner, W.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Escher, D.
Right arrow Articles by Schaffner, W.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Molecular and Cellular Biology, April 2000, p. 2774-2782, Vol. 20, No. 8
0270-7306/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Conservation of Glutamine-Rich Transactivation Function between Yeast and Humans

Dominik Escher, Morana Bodmer-Glavas, Alcide Barberis, and Walter Schaffner*

Institut für Molekularbiologie, Universität Zürich, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland

Received 1 October 1999/Returned for modification 25 October 1999/Accepted 17 December 1999

Several eukaryotic transcription factors such as Sp1 or Oct1 contain glutamine-rich domains that mediate transcriptional activation. In human cells, promoter-proximally bound glutamine-rich activation domains activate transcription poorly in the absence of acidic type activators bound at distal enhancers, but synergistically stimulate transcription with these remote activators. Glutamine-rich activation domains were previously reported to also function in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe but not in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, suggesting that budding yeast lacks this pathway of transcriptional activation. The strong interaction of an Sp1 glutamine-rich domain with the general transcription factor TAFII110 (TAFII130), and the absence of any obvious TAFII110 homologue in the budding yeast genome, seemed to confirm this notion. We reinvestigated the phenomenon by reconstituting in the budding yeast an enhancer-promoter architecture that is prevalent in higher eukaryotes but less common in yeast. Under these conditions, we observed that glutamine-rich activation domains derived from both mammalian and yeast transcription factors activated only poorly on their own but strongly synergized with acidic activators bound at the remote enhancer position. The level of activation by the glutamine-rich activation domains of Sp1 and Oct1 in combination with a remote enhancer was similar in yeast and human cells. We also found that mutations in a glutamine-rich domain had similar phenotypes in budding yeast and human cells. Our results show that glutamine-rich activation domains behave very similarly in yeast and mammals and that their activity in budding yeast does not depend on the presence of a TAFII110 homologue.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Institut für Molekularbiologie, Universität Zürich, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland. Phone: 41-1-635 3150. Fax: 41-1-635 6811. E-mail: wschaffn{at}molbio.unizh.ch.

Molecular and Cellular Biology, April 2000, p. 2774-2782, Vol. 20, No. 8
0270-7306/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


This article has been cited by other articles:



Home Help [Feedback] [For Subscribers] [Archive] [Search] [Contents]
J. Bacteriol. J. Virol. Eukaryot. Cell
Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. Clin. Vaccine Immunol. All ASM Journals

Copyright © 2000 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.