Ts. Cunningham et Tg. Cooper, THE SACCHAROMYCES-CEREVISIAE DAL80 REPRESSOR PROTEIN BINDS TO MULTIPLE COPIES OF GATAA-CONTAINING SEQUENCES (URS(GATA)), Journal of bacteriology, 175(18), 1993, pp. 5851-5861
Induced expression of the allantoin (DAL) catabolic genes in Saccharom
yces cerevisiae has been suggested to be mediated by interaction of th
ree different types of promoter elements. First is an inducer-independ
ent upstream activation sequence, UAS(NTR), whose operation is sensiti
ve to nitrogen catabolite repression. The GLN3 product is required for
UAS(NTR)-mediated transcriptional activation. This site consists of t
wo separated elements, each of which has a GATAA sequence at its core.
Response of the DAL genes to inducer is mediated by a second type of
cis-acting element, DAL UIS. The DAL82 and DAL81 genes are required fo
r response to inducer; DAL82 protein is the UIS-binding protein. When
only the UAS(NTR) and UIS elements are present, DAL gene expression oc
curs at high levels in the absence of inducer. We, therefore, hypothes
ized that a third element, an upstream repressor sequence (URS) mediat
es maintenance of DAL gene expression at a low level when inducer is a
bsent. Since the DAL and UGA genes are overexpressed and largely induc
er independent in dal80 deletion mutants, we have suggested DAL80 prot
ein negatively regulates a wide spectrum of nitrogen-catabolic gene ex
pression, likely in conjunction with a URS element. Here we show that
DAL80 protein binds to DAL3 and UGA4 upstream DNA sequences, designate
d URS(GATA), consisting of two GATAA-containing sites separated by at
least 15 bp. The preferred orientation of the sites is tail to tail, b
ut reasonable binding activity is also observed with a head-to-tail co
nfiguration. URS(GATA) elements contain the sequence GATAA at their co
re and hence share sequence homology with UAS(NTR) elements.