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Mol. Cell. Biol., 11 1996, 6494-6508, Vol 16, No. 11
H Zha, HA Fisk, MP Yaffe, N Mahajan, B Herman and JC Reed
Expression of the proapoptotic protein Bax under the control of a GAL10
promoter in Saccharomyces cerevisiae resulted in galactose-inducible cell
death. Immunofluorescence studies suggested that Bax is principally
associated with mitochondria in yeast cells. Removal of the
carboxyl-terminal transmembrane (TM) domain from Bax [creating Bax
(deltaTM)] prevented targeting to mitochondrial and completely abolished
cytotoxic function in yeast cells, suggesting that membrane targeting is
crucial for Bax-mediated lethality. Fusing a TM domain from Mas70p, a yeast
mitochondrial outer membrane protein, to Bax (deltaTM) restored targeting
to mitochondria and cytotoxic function in yeast cells. Deletion of four
well-conserved amino acids (IGDE) from the BH3 domain of Bax ablated its
ability to homodimerize and completely abrogated lethality in yeast cells.
In contrast, several Bax mutants which retained ability to homodimerize
(deltaBH1, deltaBH2, and delta1-58) also retained at least partial lethal
function in yeast cells. In coimmunoprecipitation experiments, expression
of the wild- type Bax protein in Rat-1 fibroblasts and 293 epithelial cells
induced apoptosis, whereas the Bax (deltaIGDE) mutant failed to induce
apoptosis and did not associate with endogenous wild-type Bax protein. In
contrast to yeast cells, Bax (deltaTM) protein retained cytotoxic function
in Rat-1 and 293 cells, was targeted largely to mitochondria, and dimerized
with endogenous Bax in mammalian cells. Thus, the dimerization-mediating
BH3 domain and targeting to mitochondrial membranes appear to be essential
for the cytotoxic function of Bax in both yeast and mammalian cells.
Copyright © 1996, American Society for Microbiology
Structure-function comparisons of the proapoptotic protein Bax in yeast and mammalian cells
The Burnham Institute, Cancer Research Center, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
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