Department

Molecular and Cellular Biology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2012

Embargo Period

7-3-2018

Abstract

The activities of developmentally critical transcription factors are regulated via interactions with cofactors. Such interactions influence transcription factor activity either directly through protein–protein interactions or indirectly by altering the local chromatin environment. Using a yeast double-interaction screen, we identified a highly conserved nuclear protein, Akirin, as a novel cofactor of the key Drosophila melanogaster mesoderm and muscle transcription factor Twist. We find that Akirin interacts genetically and physically with Twist to facilitate expression of some, but not all, Twist-regulated genes during embryonic myogenesis. akirin mutant embryos have muscle defects consistent with altered regulation of a subset of Twistregulated genes. To regulate transcription, Akirin colocalizes and genetically interacts with subunits of the Brahma SWI/SNFclass chromatin remodeling complex. Our results suggest that, mechanistically, Akirin mediates a novel connection between Twist and a chromatin remodeling complex to facilitate changes in the chromatin environment, leading to the optimal expression of some Twist-regulated genes during Drosophila myogenesis. We propose that this Akirin-mediated link between transcription factors and the Brahma complex represents a novel paradigm for providing tissue and target specificity for transcription factor interactions with the chromatin remodeling machinery.

Journal Title

PLoS Genetics

Journal ISSN

1553-7390

Volume

8

Issue

3

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1371/journal.pgen.1002547

Comments

© 2012 Nowak et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This work was supported by the Sloan-Kettering Institute and NIH grants GM056989 and GM078318 to MKB and by a Research Scholar Grant (RSG-08-042-01-DDC) from the American Cancer Society to YN. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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