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Polyglutamine Tracts as Modulators of Transcriptional Activation from Yeast to Mammals by Lilit Atanesyan; Viola Günther; Bernhard Dichtl; Oleg Georgiev; Walter Schaffner is a Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Abstract Microsatellite repeats are genetically unstable and subject to expansion and shrinkage. A subset of them, triplet repeats, can occur within the coding region and specify homomeric tracts of amino acids. Polyglutamine (polyQ) tracts are enriched in eukaryotic regulatory proteins, notably transcription factors, and we had shown before that they can contribute to transcriptional activation in mammalian cells. Here we generalize this finding by also including evolutionarily divergent organisms, namely, __Drosophila__ and baker’s yeast. In all three systems, Gal4-based model transcription factors were more active if they harbored a polyQ tract, and the activity depended on the length of the tract. By contrast, a polyserine tract was inactive. PolyQs acted from either an internal or a C-terminal position, thus ruling out a merely structural ‘linker’ effect. Finally, a two-hybrid assay in mammalian cells showed that polyQ tracts can interact with each other, supporting the concept that a polyQ-containing transcription factor can recruit other factors with polyQ tracts or glutamine-rich activation domains. The widespread occurrence of polyQ repeats in regu­latory proteins sugge

Who reads Polyglutamine Tracts as Modulators of Transcriptional Activation from Yeast to Mammals?

Author

Lilit Atanesyan; Viola Günther; Bernhard Dichtl; Oleg Georgiev; Walter Schaffner

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Published

2012

Language

EN

Field

Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (Life Sciences)