Drosophila FACT contributes to Hox gene expression through physical and functional interactions with GAGA factor

  1. Tsukasa Shimojima1,2,5,
  2. Masahiro Okada1,5,6,
  3. Takahiro Nakayama1,
  4. Hitoshi Ueda1,
  5. Katsuya Okawa4,
  6. Akihiro Iwamatsu4,
  7. Hiroshi Handa3, and
  8. Susumu Hirose1,7
  1. 1 Department of Developmental Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, and Department of Developmental Genetics, Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Mishima, Shizuoka-ken 411-8540, Japan, 2 Faculty of Bioscience and Biotechnology, and 3 Frontier Collaborative Research Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan, 4 Central Laboratories for Key Technology, Kirin Brewery, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama 236-0004, Japan

Abstract

Chromatin structure plays a critical role in the regulation of transcription. Drosophila GAGA factor directs chromatin remodeling to its binding sites. We show here that Drosophila FACT (facilitates chromatin transcription), a heterodimer of dSPT16 and dSSRP1, is associated with GAGA factor through its dSSRP1 subunit, binds to a nucleosome, and facilitates GAGA factor-directed chromatin remodeling. Moreover, genetic interactions between Trithorax-like encoding GAGA factor and spt16 implicate the GAGA factor–FACT complex in expression of Hox genes Ultrabithorax, Sex combs reduced, and Abdominal-B. Chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments indicated the presence of the GAGA factor–FACT complex in the regulatory regions of Ultrabithorax and Abdominal-B. These data illustrate a crucial role of FACT in the modulation of chromatin structure for the regulation of gene expression.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1086803.

  • ↵5 These authors contributed equally to this work.

  • ↵6 Present address: Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, RIKEN Tsukuba Institute, 3-1-1 Koyadai, Tsukuba, Ibaragi-ken 305-0074, Japan.

  • Corresponding author.

  • ↵7 E-MAIL shirose{at}lab.nig.ac.jp; FAX 81-55-981-6776.

    • Accepted May 5, 2003.
    • Received February 19, 2003.
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  1. Published in Advance June 18, 2003, doi: 10.1101/gad.1086803 Genes & Dev. 2003. 17: 1605-1616 Copyright © 2003, by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

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