Molecular recognition: monomer of the yeast transcriptional activator GCN4 recognizes its dimer DNA binding target sites specifically

摘要

It is widely believed that dimerization is a requirement for the yeast transcriptional activator GCN4 to recognize its specific DNA target sites. We used the basic region (226-252) of the yeast transcriptional activator GCN4, as both a monomeric peptide and a disulfide-linked dimer to investigate the interaction of the peptides with the DNA target sites AP-1 and CRE. CD and ITC experiments indicate that although the monomeric peptide GCN4-M has a weaker affinity with the DNA relative to the disulfide-linked dimer peptide GCN4-D, it recognizes AP-1 and CRE target sites specifically.