Activation of prokaryotic transcription through arbitrary protein–protein contacts

Simon L. Dove, J. Keith Joung and Ann Hochschild
Additional contact information
Simon L. Dove: Harvard Medical School
J. Keith Joung: Harvard Medical School
Ann Hochschild: Harvard Medical School

Nature, 1997, vol. 386, issue 6625, 627-630

Abstract: Abstract Many transcriptional activators in prokaryotes are known to bind near a promoter and contact RNA polymerase1–5, but it is not clear whether a protein–protein contact between an activator and RNA polymerase is enough to activate gene transcription. Here we show that contact between a DNA-bound protein and a heterologous protein domain fused to RNA polymerase can elicit transcriptional activation; moreover, the strength of this engineered protein–protein interaction determines the amount of gene activation. Our results indicate that an arbitrary interaction between a DNA-bound protein and RNA polymerase can activate transcription. We also find that when the DNA-bound 'activator' makes contact with two different components of the polymerase, the effect of these two interactions on transcription is synergistic.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/386627a0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:386:y:1997:i:6625:d:10.1038_386627a0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/386627a0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().