Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Molecular and Cellular Biology, March 2006, p. 1610-1616, Vol. 26, No. 5
0270-7306/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/MCB.26.5.1610-1616.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Irini Topalidou,2,
and
Michel Strubin1*
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine, University Medical Centre (C.M.U.), Rue Michel-Servet 1, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland,1 Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, FORTH, P.O. Box 1527, Heraklion 711 10, Crete, Greece2
Received 16 August 2005/ Returned for modification 8 October 2005/ Accepted 8 December 2005
Transcriptional activators often require histone acetyltransferases (HATs) for full activity. The common explanation is that activators directly recruit HATs to gene promoters to locally hyperacetylate histones and thereby facilitate transcription complex formation. However, in addition to being targeted to specific loci, HATs such as Gcn5 also modify histones genome-wide. Here we provide evidence for a role of this global HAT activity in regulated transcription. We show that activation by direct recruitment of the transcriptional machinery neither recruits Gcn5 nor induces changes in histone acetylation yet can strongly depend on Gcn5 at promoters showing a high basal state of Gcn5-mediated histone acetylation. We also show that Gcn5 dependency varies among core promoters and is influenced by the strength of interaction used to recruit the machinery and by the affinity of the latter for the core promoter. These data support a role for global Gcn5 HAT activity in modulating transcription independently of its known coactivator function.
Present address: Abcam Ltd., 332 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 0FW, England.
Present address: Columbia University, 1012 Fairchild Building, Mail Box 2444, New York, NY 10027.
This article has been cited by other articles:
Copyright © 2009 by the American Society for Microbiology. For an alternate route to Journals.ASM.org, visit: http://intl-journals.asm.org | More Info»