Publication Date:
1990-08-17
Description:
A recently described class of DNA binding proteins is characterized by the "bZIP" motif, which consists of a basic region that contacts DNA and an adjacent "leucine zipper" that mediates protein dimerization. A peptide model for the basic region of the yeast transcriptional activator GCN4 has been developed in which the leucine zipper has been replaced by a disulfide bond. The 34-residue peptide dimer, but not the reduced monomer, binds DNA with nanomolar affinity at 4 degrees C. DNA binding is sequence-specific as judged by deoxyribonuclease I footprinting. Circular dichroism spectroscopy suggests that the peptide adopts a helical structure when bound to DNA. These results demonstrate directly that the GCN4 basic region is sufficient for sequence-specific DNA binding and suggest that a major function of the GCN4 leucine zipper is simply to mediate protein dimerization. Our approach provides a strategy for the design of short sequence-specific DNA binding peptides.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Talanian, R V -- McKnight, C J -- Kim, P S -- GM13665/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- GM44162/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1990 Aug 17;249(4970):769-71.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Nine Cambridge Center, MA 02142.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2389142" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Base Sequence
;
Binding Sites
;
Circular Dichroism
;
DNA/*metabolism
;
DNA-Binding Proteins/*metabolism
;
Deoxyribonuclease I
;
Disulfides
;
Fungal Proteins/*metabolism
;
Leucine
;
Macromolecular Substances
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Peptides/*metabolism
;
Protein Conformation
;
*Protein Kinases
;
*Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins
;
Transcription Factors/*metabolism
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
