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PMID: 9371806 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

A network of interacting transcriptional regulators involved in Drosophila neural fate specification revealed by the yeast two-hybrid system.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ·Vol. 94 ·No. 24 ·1997-11-25 ·Pages 13099-104

Alifragis P, Poortinga G, Parkhurst SM, Delidakis C

Abstract

Neural fate specification in Drosophila is promoted by the products of the proneural genes, such as those of the achaete-scute complex, and antagonized by the products of the Enhancer of split [E(spl)] complex, hairy, and extramacrochaetae. As all these proteins bear a helix-loop-helix (HLH) dimerization domain, we investigated their potential pairwise interactions using the yeast two-hybrid system. The fidelity of the system was established by its ability to closely reproduce the already documented interactions among Da, Ac, Sc, and Extramacrochaetae. We show that the seven E(spl) basic HLH proteins can form homo- and heterodimers inter-se with distinct preferences. We further show that a subset of E(spl) proteins can heterodimerize with Da, another subset can heterodimerize with proneural proteins, and yet another with both, indicating specialization within the E(spl) family. Hairy displays no interactions with any of the HLH proteins tested. It does interact with the non-HLH protein Groucho, which itself interacts with all E(spl) basic HLH proteins, but with none of the proneural proteins or Da. We investigated the structural requirements for some of these interactions by site-specific and deletion mutagenesis.

MeSH Terms
Animals Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Transcription Factors Drosophila/genetics Drosophila Proteins Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal Helix-Loop-Helix Motifs Insect Proteins/genetics,metabolism Nerve Tissue Proteins/genetics,metabolism Protein Binding Repressor Proteins/genetics,metabolism Transcription, Genetic
Chemicals
Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Transcription Factors Drosophila Proteins Insect Proteins Nerve Tissue Proteins Repressor Proteins hairy protein, Drosophila hairy protein, insect
Authors & Affiliations
4 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Alifragis P
Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation for Research and Technology, Hellas, and Department of Biology, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece.
Poortinga G
Parkhurst S M
Delidakis C
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Article Info
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Abbr.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
ISSN
0027-8424
DOI
10.1073/pnas.94.24.13099
Published
1997-11-25
Pages
13099-104
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
7505876
PMCID
PMC24269
Subset
IM
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1073/pnas.94.24.13099 PMC Full Text View journal details
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