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Originally published In Press as doi:10.1074/jbc.M204616200 on August 26, 2002
J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 277, Issue 45, 43463-43473, November 8, 2002
Sex-specific Gene Regulation
THE DOUBLESEX DM MOTIF IS A BIPARTITE DNA-BINDING DOMAIN*
Uma
Narendra §,
Lingyang
Zhu §¶,
Biaoru
Li ,
Jill
Wilken , and
Michael A.
Weiss **
From the Department of Biochemistry, Case Western
Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 and
Gryphon Sciences, Inc.,
South San Francisco, California 94080
Sex-specific gene expression in Drosophila
melanogaster is regulated in part by the Doublesex (DSX)
transcription factor. Male- and female-specific splicing isoforms share
a novel DNA-binding domain, designated the DM motif. This domain is
conserved among a newly recognized family of vertebrate transcription
factors involved in developmental patterning and sex determination. The DM motif consists of an N-terminal zinc module and a disordered C-terminal tail, hypothesized to fold on specific DNA binding as a
recognition -helix. Truncation of the tail does not perturb the
structure of the zinc module but impairs DNA binding and
DNA-dependent dimerization. Chemical protein synthesis and
alanine scanning mutagenesis are employed to test the contributions of
13 side chains to specific DNA binding. Selected arginine or lysine
residues in the zinc module were substituted by norleucine, an
isostere that maintains the aliphatic portion of the side chain
but lacks a positive charge. Arginine or glutamine residues in the tail were substituted by alanine. Evidence is obtained that both the zinc
module and C-terminal tail contribute to a bipartite DNA-binding surface. Conserved arginine and glutamine residues in the tail are
required for high affinity DNA recognition, consistent with its
proposed role as a nascent recognition -helix.
*
This work is a contribution from the Cleveland Center for
Structural Biology and was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (to M. A. W.).The costs of publication of this
article were defrayed in part by the
payment of page charges. The article
must therefore be hereby marked
"advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section
1734 solely to indicate this fact.
The atomic coordinates and the structure factors (code 1LPV) have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank, Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ (http://www.rcsb.org/).
§
Both authors contributed equally to this work.
¶
Present address: Array BioPharma, 3200 Walnut St., Boulder, CO 80301.
**
To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 216-368-5991;
Fax: 216-368-3419; E-mail: weiss@biochemistry.cwru.edu.
Copyright © 2002 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

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Copyright © 2002 by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
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