Transcriptional Activation Modulated by Homopolymeric Glutamine and Proline Stretches

Many transcription factors contain proline- or glutamine-rich activation domains. Here it is shown that simple homopolymeric stretches of these amino acids can activate transcription when fused to the DNA binding domain of GAL4 factor. In vitro, activity increased with polymer length, whereas in cel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 1994-02, Vol.263 (5148), p.808-811
Main Authors: Gerber, Hans-Peter, Seipel, Katja, Georgiev, Oleg, Höfferer, Manuela, Hug, Martin, Rusconi, Sandro, Schaffner, Walter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino Acid Sequence
Amino acids
Animals
Base Sequence
Biological and medical sciences
Cell Line
COS cells
DNA
Drosophila
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Genetic diseases
Glutamine - chemistry
Glutamine - pharmacology
HeLa Cells
Humans
Huntington disease
Molecular and cellular biology
Molecular genetics
Molecular Sequence Data
Myotonic dystrophy
Peptides - chemistry
Peptides - pharmacology
Recombinant Fusion Proteins - pharmacology
Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid
Transcription factors
Transcription Factors - chemistry
Transcription Factors - pharmacology
Transcription. Transcription factor. Splicing. Rna processing
Transcriptional Activation
Transfection
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Summary:Many transcription factors contain proline- or glutamine-rich activation domains. Here it is shown that simple homopolymeric stretches of these amino acids can activate transcription when fused to the DNA binding domain of GAL4 factor. In vitro, activity increased with polymer length, whereas in cell transfection assays maximal activity was achieved by 10 to 30 glutamines or about 10 prolines. Similar results were obtained when glutamine stretches were placed within a [GAL4]-VP16 chimeric protein. Because these stretches are encoded by rapidly evolving triplet repeats (microsatellites), they may be the main cause for modulation of transcription factor activity and thus result in subtle or overt genomic effects.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.8303297