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Molecular and Cellular Biology, November 2005, p. 9886-9896, Vol. 25, No. 22
0270-7306/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/MCB.25.22.9886-9896.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Christoph W. Müller,1 and
Peter B. Becker2*
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Grenoble Outstation, B.P. 181, 38042 Grenoble, Cedex 9, France,1 Adolf-Butenandt-Institut, Molekularbiologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 80336 München, Germany2
Received 4 May 2005/ Returned for modification 6 July 2005/ Accepted 25 August 2005
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The metazoan chromatin accessibility complex (CHRAC) is formed by association of two small proteins of 14 and 16 kDa with ACF1 and ISWI (11, 40). The yeast ISW2 complex also contains a pair of histone fold proteins and thus appears to be related to CHRAC (26, 35).
The histone folds in CHRAC14 and CHRAC16 have been predicted by sequence analysis, but they so far have not been characterized in any detail. In the present work, we determined the crystal structure of a CHRAC14-16 heterodimer from Drosophila melanogaster, which indeed revealed two variant histone folds that interact in a histone-like handshake manner. Histone fold motifs are novel structures in a nucleosome remodeling machinery. Related structures are used for heterodimerization in the transcription regulators NFYB-NFYC (CBFA-CBFC) (49), HAP3-HAP5 (2), and NC2
-NC2ß (21). Histone folds are abundant in the basal transcription factor TFIID, where they mediate dimerization of several TBP-associated factors (4, 20). Recently, Kukimoto and colleagues described the interaction of the human CHRAC14-CHRAC16 homologues with hACF1 and showed that the presence of the two proteins facilitated nucleosome sliding in vitro (29). We show here that these functional interactions are conserved in the Drosophila complex. Our detailed analysis of the DNA binding properties of the CHRAC14-16 heterodimer suggests that these proteins function as DNA chaperones in striking analogy to nucleosome sliding enhancement previously observed for HMGB1 (6).
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N (
2 to 8), CHRAC14
C (1 to 108), CHRAC16
N (
2 to 18), and CHRAC16
C (1 to 117) were produced by site-directed mutagenesis using the QuikChange mutagenesis kit (Stratagene) on the bicistronic expression plasmid. All constructs were verified by sequencing. Expression and purification of p14-p16 in Escherichia coli. Full-length Drosophila p14-p16 and deletion variants were expressed from the bicistronic plasmids in E. coli BL21(DE3)(pLysS). Colonies were grown in LB medium containing 100 µg/ml ampicillin and 34 µg/ml chloramphenicol at 37°C to an optical density (at 600 nm) of 0.8 and induced with 0.3 mM isopropyl-ß-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) at 30°C for 3 h. Bacterial cell pellets were resuspended in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) containing protease inhibitors (0.2 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride, 2 µg/ml aprotinin, 0.7 µg/ml pepstatin, 1 µg/ml leupeptin). Cells were lysed by sonication, and the cell extract was passed over glutathione-Sepharose 4B beads (Amersham) equilibrated in PBS-0.05% NP-40. Beads were washed in 20 column volumes PBS500 (PBS with 500 mM NaCl, 0.05% NP-40) and 10 column volumes PBS-0.05% NP-40. The protein was either eluted from the beads with 100 mM Tris, pH 8.0, 50 mM KCl, 30 mM glutathione (Sigma) or cleaved off the glutathione S-transferase (GST) tag with thrombin (Amersham) according to the manufacturer's protocol. The protein was then passed over an Ni2+-loaded 1-ml Hi-Trap chelating fast protein liquid chromatography column (Amersham) and eluted with an imidazole gradient (0 to 500 mM) in HEMG500 buffer (25 mM HEPES, pH 7.6, 500 mM KCl, 12.5 mM MgCl2, 0.1 mM EDTA, 10% glycerol). The heterodimer eluted at approximately 170 mM imidazole. For crystallization, the CHRAC16 C-terminal His tag was cleaved off by TEV protease. After cleavage, the protein was passed over the Ni2+ column again and collected from the flowthrough. Finally, the p14-p16 heterodimer was applied to a Superdex 200 or Superdex 75 gel filtration column, respectively (depending on the presence or absence of the GST tag). Peak fractions were pooled and concentrated. The protein concentration was determined using the Bio-Rad protein assay.
Crystallization and structure determination.
Crystallization experiments were performed using a Cartesian crystallization robot (Genomic Solutions) with drop sizes of 0.2 µl protein solution mixed with 0.2 µl reservoir solution at a concentration of 35 mg/ml heterodimer. Crystals grew under several conditions of the Hampton Index screen. The largest crystals grew as regular rhomboids with sizes of 350 by 200 by 100 µm3 above a reservoir containing 0.1 M citric acid, pH 3.5, 2 M ammonium sulfate (condition 1, Index screen). The space group of these crystals is P3221: a, 76.0 Å; c, 166.1 Å;
, 120°. A second crystal form yielding crystals sufficiently large for data collection was obtained with 0.1 M HEPES, pH 7.5, 12% (wt/vol) polyethylene glycol 3350, 5 mM CoCl2, 5 mM NiCl2, 5 mM CdCl2, 5 mM MgCl2 (condition 64, Index screen) as the reservoir solution. Those crystals grew as cubes of 100 by 100 by 100 µm3 and possess space group P4212: a, 130.5 Å; c, 59.7 Å. An initial data set of crystal form I, space group P3221 was collected at ESRF beam line ID14-4 to 2.4 Å resolution (Table 1). Attempts to solve the structure of this crystal form by molecular replacement failed. Therefore, we used the second crystal form (space group P4212) to solve the structure by single isomorphous replacement combined with anomalous scattering using data from a native crystal and a methylmercury acetate derivative collected at ESRF beam line ID29 (Table 1). Two major heavy-atom sites were located and refined with the program SOLVE (45), and the initial single isomorphous replacement combined with anomalous scattering map was further improved by solvent flattening and histogram matching using the program RESOLVE (44). The two mercury atoms were bound to Cys49 of CHRAC16 in both heterodimers present in the asymmetric unit and served as starting points for model building. The structure was manually built using the program O (28) and refined with the program CNS (8) against native data of this crystal form. The refined model was subsequently used to locate both heterodimers of the asymmetric unit in crystal form I (space group P3221) using the program AMORE (10) followed by refinement using the program CNS. The models in both crystal forms possess excellent stereochemistry. The final refinement statistics in both crystal forms are given in Table 1.
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TABLE 1. Data collection, structure solution, and refinement
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In vitro translation. ACF1 derivatives were translated in vitro using the TNT system (Promega). Constructs were either expressed from pSPORT (Invitrogen) or pING14A (23) vectors and labeled with [35S]methionine and [35S]cysteine (ratio, 70% to 30%) during the reaction.
GST pull-down assays. Glutathione-Sepharose 4B beads (Amersham) were equilibrated with EX250 buffer (250 mM KCl). The beads were loaded with GST, GSTp14, GSTp14-p16, and deletion constructs with a final concentration of 0.75 mg of protein/ml of beads by rotating overnight at 4°C. Beads were washed twice with EX250. To 25 µl of these beads, in vitro-translated ACF1 constructs were bound by rotating in a total volume of 100 µl (EX250 buffer) for 3 h at 4°C. Beads were washed once with EX250, three times with EX500 buffer, once with EX250, and once with EX100 buffer. Protein on the beads was separated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and signals were enhanced by incubation in Amplify solution (Amersham) for 30 min before drying. Bound in vitro translation constructs were detected by exposure of the gel to X-ray film.
Electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA). Band shifts were either performed with 0.5 nM radiolabeled 35-bp DNA (5'-CCCTATAACCCCTGCATTGAATTCCAGTCTGATAA-3'), 72-bp DNA (linker sequence for cloning of the bicistronic p14-p16 expression vector, see above), and 248-bp rRNA genes (32) (see Fig. S5 in the supplemental material) or with 6 nM radiolabeled 248-bp rRNA genes (see Fig. 6B) with the protein concentrations given in the figure legends. Protein was allowed to bind to DNA for 10 min at room temperature. DNA-protein complex formation was tested on 4.5% to 6.5% polyacrylamide gels in 0.4x Tris-borate-EDTA. Gels were run for 3 to 5 h at 100 V.
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FIG. 6. DNA binding by CHRAC p14-p16. (A) Surface charge distribution of p14-p16 compared to that of NFYB-NFYC and H2A-H2B heterodimers calculated with GRASP (38). Negative and positive potentials (±15 kBT [kB, Boltzmann constant; T, temperature]) are depicted in red and blue, respectively. The orientation of the three protein pairs is identical and corresponds to that shown for the p14-p16 worm model. Helix 1 of CHRAC16 was modeled onto NFYC and is depicted in red (compare also to Fig. S1 in the supplemental material). (B) EMSA with wt p14-p16 and p14-p16 deletion mutants. Six-nanomolar concentrations of radiolabeled 248-bp DNA were incubated with 20, 5, 2, 0.5, and 0.2 µM of the respective p14-p16 derivatives before complexes were resolved on a native polyacrylamide gel. An autoradiography of the dried gel is shown. , absent.
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WAC (approximately 30 to 300 pM) (15) in EX50 buffer containing 1 mM ATP and 0.2 mg/ml bovine serum albumin for 45 min at room temperature. Where indicated, full-length and truncated p14-p16 heterodimers were added to the sliding reaction mixtures in various concentrations as indicated in the figure legends before the start of the reaction.
ATPase assay.
The ATPase assay was performed as described previously (13) with the following modifications. Standard reaction mixtures (15 µl) contained 50 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 50 mM KCl, 0.5 mM 2-mercaptoethanol, 0.1 g/liter bovine serum albumin, 20 µM ATP, 0.67 mM MgCl2, and 35 kBq [
-32P]ATP (Amersham). The ATPase activity of 3 fmol ACF was determined in the presence of either 0.1 µg double-stranded DNA or the same amount of chromatinized DNA. Reaction mixtures were incubated at 26°C for 30 min.
Protein structure accession numbers. The coordinates and structure factors of the CHRAC14-CHRAC16 heterodimer have been deposited with the PDB under accession numbers 2BYK and 2BYM for crystal forms I and II, respectively.
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FIG. 1. Structure of the CHRAC p14-p16 heterodimer. (A) Alignment of Drosophila CHRAC14 and CHRAC16 with human and mouse homologues, NFYB and NFYC, subunits of the human transcription factor NFY, and Xenopus histones H2A and H2B. Conserved or conservatively substituted residues within the p14-p16 families and compared to NFYB-NFYC are depicted with a yellow background. In addition, residues conserved or conservatively substituted in H2A-H2B compared to p14-p16 and NFYB-NFYC are also shown with a yellow background. Secondary structure elements in the p14 and p16 subunits were determined by manual inspection. The noncanonical p16 helix C is shown in light blue. Secondary structure elements of NFYB-NFYC and H2A-H2B are depicted as published previously (33, 41). Disordered regions present in the initial constructs are represented by broken lines and are not included in the final model. H2A-H2B residues forming hydrogen bonds with nucleosomal DNA are shown in boxes. Intrachain salt bridges conserved between p14 and NFYB (red), but not between p16 and NFYC (blue), are indicated. (B) Ribbon representation of the p14-p16 heterodimer. CHRAC14 and CHRAC16 are depicted in red and blue, respectively. The color code for the two CHRAC subunits is kept throughout the figures. Figure 1B (see also Fig. S1 and S3 in the supplemental material) was produced with program Ribbons (9).
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1-loop L1-helix
2-loop L2-helix
3 is extended by a long fourth helix,
C, characteristic for the H2B family. p16 also contains a C-terminal helical region following helix
3, similar to other H2A-related proteins. To allow comparison with other histone fold proteins, we designate the last helix
C, although its conformation is rather irregular compared to canonical
or 310 helices.
Probably as a result of partial proteolytic trimming, the predicted p16 helix
1 is missing, and presumably as a consequence, residues preceding helix
2 adopt a conformation different from other histone fold proteins. In both crystal forms, two p14-p16 heterodimers interact through the same extensive interface, where p14 helix
2 of a neighboring heterodimer inserts into a groove, which in a classical histone fold would be occupied by p16 helix
1. We suppose that, under physiological conditions, the N-terminal helix
1 in CHRAC16 occupies this position and that it was only displaced under our experimental conditions, which allowed crystallization. The interface between the two heterodimers is probably not physiologically relevant, which is further corroborated by the observation that, in ultracentrifugation studies, p14-p16 behave as heterodimers (K. Hartlepp, N. Mücke, and J. Langowski, unpublished observations).
Comparison with other histone-like proteins.
The overall structure of the heterodimer closely resembles other histone-like protein pairs like the NFYB-NFYC heterodimer (41) of the trimeric transcription factor NFY (root mean square deviation [RMSD] = 1.68 Å, 143 C
atoms) and histone pairs H2A-H2B (33) (RMSD = 1.87 Å, 127 C
atoms). Main differences to the NFYB-NFYC and H2A-H2B heterodimers are in the C-terminal end of p16 helix
2 and in the conformation of the following loop L2 (see Fig. S1 in the supplemental material). Compared to NFYC, helix
2 of p16 is shorter by two residues, whereas loop L2 has one additional residue inserted. As a result, loop L2 adopts a different conformation and p16 residues 72 to 74 are able to form a short two-stranded sheet with ßL1 residues 28 to 30 of p14. Additional differences between p14-p16 and H2A-H2B are a longer loop between helices
3 and
C in p14 than in H2B and differently positioned helices
3 and
C in p16 compared to H2A (see below). Thus, the histone folds of p14-p16 and NFYB-NFYC are more similar than those of the H2A-H2B heterodimer. Indeed, histone core regions of CHRAC14 and CHRAC16 share 32% and 27% identical residues with NFYB and NFYC, respectively, whereas the core regions of CHRAC14 and CHRAC16 share only 9% and 15% identical amino acids with H2B and H2A, respectively (Fig. 1A). Despite the better conservation of the histone cores between p14-p16 and NFYB-NFYC, the N- and C-terminal extensions are not conserved, either. Accordingly, these extensions either are disordered in the crystal structure (p14-p16) or were essentially omitted from the crystallized constructs (NFYB-NFYC).
CHRAC14-CHRAC16 interact with the N terminus of ACF1. p14 and p16 bind to the ISWI ATPase, but this interaction is disrupted by moderate salt concentrations (11). Since the association of p14-p16 with CHRAC resists salt washes of up to 1 M KCl (A. Eberharter, unpublished observation), we tested for binding of the small subunits to ACF1 after coexpression in insect cells. Sf9 cells were coinfected with a tandem baculovirus expression vector encoding p14FLAG and His6-tagged p16 and viruses coding for myc-tagged ACF1 or variants lacking parts of the protein (Fig. 2A). The FLAG tag on p14 was used to purify interacting proteins from the whole-cell extracts, and ACF1 was detected by Western blotting with anti-myc antibody. By this assay, we observed binding of full-length ACF1 and the N-terminal 1,064 amino acids (aa) of ACF1 to p14-p16, but a C-terminal fragment containing aa 497 to 1,476 did not bind (Fig. 2B). Interestingly, in this experiment, several N-terminal degradation products that could be detected by the anti-myc antibody in the input (Fig. 2B, lanes 2 to 4) did not bind to the FLAG beads, which also points to an ACF1 N-terminal binding site for p14-p16.
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FIG. 2. p14-p16 interacts with the N terminus of ACF1. (A) ACF1 derivatives used in this study. Top panel: baculovirus-encoded, myc-tagged ACF1 derivatives; bottom panel: in vitro-translated ACF1 derivatives. Interaction with p14-p16, as determined by the results shown in panels B and D, is indicated to the right: +, interaction; , no interaction. (B) FLAG affinity purification of complexes from whole-cell extracts of SF9 cells coinfected with p14FLAG-HISp16 and myc-tagged ACF1 variants (shown in panel A). The Western blot was probed with anti-myc antibody. In the mock infection (lane 1), the cells were transfected with p14FLAG-HISp16 alone. Bands corresponding to the ACF1 constructs in the input are marked with asterisks. (C) Coomassie-stained 15% polyacrylamide gel of glutathione-Sepharose beads loaded with purified GST, GSTp14, and GSTp14-HISp16 (3.75 µg/lane). (D) GST pull down of in vitro-translated ACF1 constructs (shown in panel A). Top panel: 5% of input; bottom panel: pull down with recombinant GSTp14-HISp16 heterodimer.
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CHRAC14-CHRAC16 enhance ACF-mediated nucleosome sliding. Previously, we have shown that ACF and CHRAC can catalyze the sliding of histone octamers on short DNA fragments (15, 32). The nucleosome sliding assay exploits the different electrophoretic mobilities of nucleosomes, which are situated either centrally or at the end of a 248-bp DNA fragment. ACF is able to slide a histone octamer from the end to the center of a DNA fragment in an ATP-dependent reaction (15).
We monitored the effect of p14-p16 on ACF-induced nucleosome sliding by titration of increasing amounts of the heterodimer into sliding reactions (Fig. 3). At high ACF concentrations, no difference in sliding activity could be detected in the absence or presence of p14-p16 (lanes 1 to 6). However, at limiting ACF concentrations, nucleosome relocation was significantly enhanced by the presence of p14-p16 (Fig. 3, compare lane 16 with lanes 17 and 18 and lane 22 with lanes 23 and 24). This effect was ATP-dependent (lanes 8 to 13), indicating that the difference in nucleosome migration was caused by nucleosome repositioning and not by interaction of p14-p16 with the nucleosome (lanes 7 and 14).
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FIG. 3. ACF-catalyzed nucleosome sliding is enhanced by p14-p16. Six-nanomolar radiolabeled end-positioned nucleosomes were incubated with approximately 300 pM, 90 pM, and 30 pM ACF, and decreasing amounts of p14-p16 (8, 4, 2, and 1 µM) were added to the reaction mixtures. With 300 pM ACF, sliding is maximal and no further enhancement due to p14-p16 is seen (lanes 2 to 6). Nucleosomes do not slide in the absence of ATP (lanes 9 to 13). Migration of the nucleosomes is not affected by p14-p16 alone (lane 7 and 14). +, present; , absent. The bands correspond to (from the top) centrally positioned nucleosome, end-positioned nucleosome, and free DNA fragment, as schematically indicated to the left.
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4 to 111, ACF
WAC) (19) and examined whether the effect of p14-p16 was dependent on interaction with ACF (Fig. 4). The N-terminal deletion did not affect the ATPase and nucleosome sliding activities of ACF (data not shown). The ATPase activity and concentration of the two ACF complexes were carefully matched, which allowed proper monitoring of the p14-p16 effect. Full sliding enhancement by p14-p16 could only be observed with intact ACF but not with the ACF
WAC complex (Fig. 4A, compare lanes 14 and 15 with lanes 20 and 21 and lanes 26 and 27 with lanes 32 and 33). The dependence of the p14-p16-mediated enhancement on an intact N terminus of ACF1 was also obvious in a time course of nucleosome sliding (Fig. 4B). Together, these results show that p14-p16 are able to stimulate the activity of ACF and that this effect requires interaction with the N terminus of ACF1, consistent with similar observations made recently for human CHRAC/ACF (29).
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FIG. 4. The p14-p16 sliding enhancement is mediated by the ACF1 WAC domain. (A) Protein titrations. Nucleosome sliding is catalyzed by 300, 75, and 37.5 pM concentrations of either ACF or ACF WAC (decreasing shading of bar) in the presence of decreasing amounts of p14-p16 (8, 4, 2, and 1 µM) as indicated. (B) Time course. Reactions were performed with concentrations of ACF and ACF WAC complex (approximately 180 pM) which do not suffice to slide nucleosomes in the absence or presence of p14-p16 (approximately 8 µM). Time points are taken after 0, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 45 min. , absent. Labeling is as described for Fig. 3.
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FIG. 5. Role of N- and C-terminal tails of p14-p16 for ACF1 binding. (A) Summary of p14-p16 derivatives. (B) Coomassie-stained 15% polyacrylamide gel of glutathione-Sepharose beads loaded with 3.75 µg of purified recombinant GSTp14-p16 derivatives as indicated. (C) GST pull down of in vitro-translated ACF1 constructs (shown in Fig. 1C). Lane 1, 5% of input. The p14-p16 derivatives used for the pull down are indicated above the lanes. The in vitro-translated ACF1 derivatives assayed for interaction are indicated to the right.
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We examined the DNA binding properties of the p14-p16 dimer by EMSA and pulldown assays (Fig. 6B; see Fig. S4 in the supplemental material; also data not shown). The p14-p16 heterodimer was unable to bind to DNA shorter than 20 bp (data not shown), and binding to a 35-bp DNA fragment was barely detectable. Binding to DNA fragments of 72 bp and 248 bp was measurable. EMSA with the 72-bp fragment revealed a distinct band that may correspond to a single p14-p16 bound to DNA, but additional heterogeneity of fragment mobility suggested variable positioning and stoichiometry of complexes at a higher protein input (see Fig. S4A and B in the supplemental material). We determined a formal KD of binding (assuming that all heterodimers are functional) of 2.3 µM (see Fig. S4B and C in the supplemental material). Low affinity for DNA has also been observed for the human homologues (40).
N-terminal truncation of p14 or p16 had no effect on DNA binding (Fig. 6B, lanes 8 to 12 and lanes 20 to 24, respectively), whereas the C-terminal truncations showed opposite effects. Deletion of the p14 C terminus reduced binding of the heterodimer to DNA by an order of magnitude (Fig. 6B, lanes 14 to 18). In contrast, deletion of the p16 C terminus enhanced DNA binding drastically compared to the wt (Fig. 6B, lanes 26 to 30), with an apparent KD of 57 nM for p14-p16
C binding to the 72-bp fragment (see Fig. S4B and D in the supplemental material). This deletion removes a highly negatively charged tail fragment consisting of 23 glutamates, aspartates, and serines, thereby causing a shift of the theoretical pI of p16 from 4.47 to 9.30. Apparently, this anionic structure prevented tighter binding of the p14-p16 heterodimer to DNA, a feature that has not been observed for the human counterpart (29). Interestingly, a p14
C-p16
C double deletion mutant showed increased DNA binding, similar to the p14-p16
C deletion mutant (data not shown). The effect of the deletion of the anionic p16 tail is thus dominant over the effect of the p14 tail deletion.
Dynamic, but not tight, DNA binding of CHRAC14-CHRAC16 facilitates nucleosome sliding. We tested whether the different DNA binding affinities of the mutant p14-p16 heterodimers affected ACF-induced nucleosome sliding (Fig. 7A). The N-terminal deletions of both p14 and p16 did not affect nucleosome sliding activity of ACF significantly (Fig. 7A) under these conditions. By contrast, the heterodimer with the C-terminal deletion of p14 was significantly less able to stimulate nucleosome sliding (Fig. 7A, lanes 13 to 18, and B, lanes 13 to 18). Since this variant heterodimer binds DNA much more poorly than the wild type, the result suggests that DNA-binding of p14-p16 is required to facilitate nucleosome sliding.
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FIG. 7. Effect of p14-p16 tails on nucleosome sliding. (A) Deletion of the p14 C terminus leads to loss of sliding enhancement. Sliding reaction mixtures contained 6 nM concentrations of end-positioned nucleosome, 37.5 pM ACF, and 2, 1, 0.5, and 0.25 µM concentrations of intact p14-p16 (lanes 3 to 6), p14 N-p16 (lanes 9 to 12), p14 C-p16 (lanes 15 to 18), or p14-p16 N (lanes 21 to 24). (B) Quantification of nucleosome sliding. The percentage of nucleosomes that had been moved from the end to the center position was determined using a phosphorimager (Fuji). The graph shows the average sliding results from two independent experiments. (C) Deletion of the p16 C terminus inhibits ACF-catalyzed nucleosome sliding. Sliding reactions contained 6 nM concentrations of end-positioned nucleosome, 0.3 nM ACF, and different p14-p16 derivatives (6, 3, 1.5, and 0.75 µM), with the exception of p14-p16 C, for which concentrations of 1.5, 0.75, 0.38, and 0.19 µM were used (lanes 26 to 30). +, present; , absent. Labeling is as described for Fig. 3.
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C affect the potential of the heterodimers to stimulate nucleosome sliding? We were unable to assay p14-p16
C under standard assay conditions, since its tight binding to the nucleosome interfered with the sliding analysis (not shown). Lowered concentrations of p14-p16
C did not interfere with the assay but also did not stimulate nucleosome sliding. To test for a potential negative effect of this mutant we increased the amount of ACF in the sliding reactions to levels that catalyzed complete nucleosome mobilization in the absence of p14-p16 (Fig. 7C). Under those conditions, the p14-p16
C deletion mutant inhibited the sliding reaction (lanes 25 to 30), whereas none of the other deletion mutants affected ACF activity, even at four-times-higher concentrations (lanes 7 to 24). Interestingly, the presence of p14-p16
C did not affect the ATPase activity of ACF (see Fig. S5 in the supplemental material), indicating that p14-p16 affect the efficiency of the ATPase to translocate the DNA relative to the octamer surface. In summary, our data suggest that dynamic, but not tight, nucleosome binding of p14-p16 stimulates ACF-induced nucleosome sliding. |
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The striking analogies between the properties of HMGB1 and the p14-p16 heterodimer lead us to speculate that the small histone fold subunits of CHRAC may serve as a built-in DNA chaperone that aids the disruption of DNA-histone interactions during the remodeling process by transiently providing a DNA binding surface. The histone fold heterodimer of p14-p16 resembles the geometry of H2A-H2B but lacks the tight grip of their interacting side chains. p14-p16 thus provide a surface that may lend itself for transient deposition of a segment of DNA stripped off the histone octamer surface. Furthermore, the acidic C-terminal tail of CHRAC16 might be in place to serve as a transient acceptor for a positively charged histone surface, such as the N terminus of histone H3 that reaches out into the linker DNA.
It has been suggested that some nucleosome remodeling enzymes use H2A-H2B heterodimer exchange to facilitate remodeling (18). In this respect, the presence of histone-fold subunits in CHRAC with an overall structure and charge distribution similar to histones H2A-H2B is worth noting. Replacement of H2A-H2B with p14-p16 would lead to significant nucleosome destabilization. In the nucleosome, the region following helix
C in histone H2A forms a two-stranded ß-sheet with the C-terminal end of a neighboring H4 histone, which stabilizes the octamer structure (33). In p16, this region corresponds to helix
C, which packs against helices
2 and
3. In a hypothetical model where the p14-p16 heterodimer would replace H2A-H2B in the nucleosome, the p16 helix
C would prevent a similar interaction with the histone H4 C terminus and might considerably destabilize the nucleosome. However, the fact that we never observed a destabilization of nucleosomes during CHRAC-induced remodeling argues against such a scenario (32, 47). In addition, the observed differences in the core structures argue against a possible exchange during remodeling.
CHRAC is an evolutionarily conserved machinery. Recently, Kukimoto and colleagues reported on the stimulatory role of the human homologues of p14 and p16 on human ACF, but their study did not provide a mechanistic explanation (29). The human p14-p16 homologues, hCHRAC17 and hCHRAC15, also contain acidic glutamate- and aspartate-rich C termini of different length. However, in unresolved contrast to our findings, Kukimoto and colleagues reported a reduced DNA binding upon deletion of the negatively charged tail domains (29).
Physiological function of p14-p16.
The question of whether ACF and CHRAC exist as independent entities in living cells is still unanswered. The lack of suitable mutations in metazoan cells or reagents to localize the histone fold subunits in nuclei with confidence have hindered the exploration of their physiologic functions. Under these circumstances, the existence of homologous proteins in yeast provides valuable information. Recently, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae histone fold proteins Dls1p and Dpb4p were shown to associate with the Isw2 remodeling complex to form an entity reminiscent of CHRAC (26, 35). The similarity between the yeast Isw2 and the metazoan ACF complexes was previously not appreciated due to the very limited similarity between ACF1 and Itc1p, the largest subunit of the Isw2 complex. Strikingly, the two proteins only show similarity in their very N terminus with a recognizable WAC motif (35), which we and others (29) showed to be involved in the interaction with the histone fold subunits. The precise role of Dls1p and Dpb4p is still unclear, since yeast CHRAC appears to counteract telomeric silencing (26) but, on the other hand, is involved in the repression of some target genes (35). The situation is complicated by the fact that Dpb4p is also a subunit of a DNA polymerase
complex, and mutant phenotypes may therefore reflect composite functions. Isw2-dependent repression of transcription and nucleosome repositioning is variably effected by mutation of the DLS1 gene at different gene loci (35), suggesting the possibility that two complexes related to ACF and CHRAC also exist in yeast, differing only by the presence of the histone fold subunits. Resolution of these issues will be facilitated by localization of all CHRAC components in living cells.
This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through TR5 and SFB594. C.F.-T. and T.G. acknowledge support by a long-term EMBO postdoctoral fellowship and an EMBL predoctoral fellowship, respectively.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://mcb.asm.org/. ![]()
Present address: Lehrstuhl für Strukturchemie, Georg-August-Universität, Tammannstr. 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany. ![]()
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