Baxley RM, Bullard JD, Klein MW, Fell AG, Morales-Rosado JA, Duan T, Geyer PK. Deciphering the DNA code for the function of the Drosophila polydactyl zinc finger protein Suppressor of Hairy-wing.
Nucleic Acids Res 2017;
45:4463-4478. [PMID:
28158673 PMCID:
PMC5416891 DOI:
10.1093/nar/gkx040]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/08/2016] [Accepted: 01/30/2017] [Indexed: 12/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Polydactyl zinc finger (ZF) proteins have prominent roles in gene regulation and often execute multiple regulatory functions. To understand how these proteins perform varied regulation, we studiedDrosophila Suppressor of Hairy-wing [Su(Hw)], an exemplar multifunctional polydactyl ZF protein. We identified separation-of-function (SOF) alleles that encode proteins disrupted in a single ZF that retain one of the Su(Hw) regulatory activities. Through extended in vitro analyses of the Su(Hw) ZF domain, we show that clusters of ZFs bind individual modules within a compound DNA consensus sequence. Through in vivo analysis of SOF mutants, we find that Su(Hw) genomic sites separate into sequence subclasses comprised of combinations of modules, with subclasses enriched for different chromatin features. These data suggest a Su(Hw) code, wherein DNA binding dictates its cofactor recruitment and regulatory output. We propose that similar DNA codes might be used to confer multiple regulatory functions of other polydactyl ZF proteins.
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