Skip Navigation


Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on March 20, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research 2009 37(10):3153-3164; doi:10.1093/nar/gkp157
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow Print PDF (9269K) Freely available
Right arrow Screen PDF (1071K) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
37/10/3153    most recent
gkp157v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Commercial Re-use Guidelines
for Open Access NAR Content
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gangelhoff, T. A.
Right arrow Articles by Churchill, M. E. A.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Gangelhoff, T. A.
Right arrow Articles by Churchill, M. E. A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, Vol. 37, No. 10 3153-3164
© 2009 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Structural Biology

Structural analysis and DNA binding of the HMG domains of the human mitochondrial transcription factor A

Todd A. Gangelhoff1,2, Purnima S. Mungalachetty1, Jay C. Nix3 and Mair E. A. Churchill1,2,*

1Department of Pharmacology, 2Molecular Biology Program, University of Colorado Denver, School of Medicine, 12801 East 17th Avenue, Aurora, CO 80045-0511 and 3Molecular Biology Consortium, Beamline 4.2.2, Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 303 724 3670; Fax: +1 303 724 3663; Email: mair.churchill{at}ucdenver.edu

Received December 6, 2008. Revised February 23, 2009. Accepted February 24, 2009.

The mitochondrial transcription factor A (mtTFA) is central to assembly and initiation of the mitochondrial transcription complex. Human mtTFA (h-mtTFA) is a dual high mobility group box (HMGB) protein that binds site-specifically to the mitochondrial genome and demarcates the promoters for recruitment of h-mtTFB1, h-mtTFB2 and the mitochondrial RNA polymerase. The stoichiometry of h-mtTFA was found to be a monomer in the absence of DNA, whereas it formed a dimer in the complex with the light strand promoter (LSP) DNA. Each of the HMG boxes and the C-terminal tail were evaluated for their ability to bind to the LSP DNA. Removal of the C-terminal tail only slightly decreased nonsequence specific DNA binding, and box A, but not box B, was capable of binding to the LSP DNA. The X-ray crystal structure of h-mtTFA box B, at 1.35 Å resolution, revealed the features of a noncanonical HMG box. Interactions of box B with other regions of h-mtTFA were observed. Together, these results provide an explanation for the unusual DNA-binding properties of box B and suggest possible roles for this domain in transcription complex assembly.

Present address: Purnima S. Mungalachetty, Toxikon Corporation, 25 Wiggins Ave, Bedford MA 01730, USA


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Nucleic Acids ResHome page
T. S. Wong, S. Rajagopalan, S. M. Freund, T. J. Rutherford, A. Andreeva, F. M. Townsley, M. Petrovich, and A. R. Fersht
Biophysical characterizations of human mitochondrial transcription factor A and its binding to tumor suppressor p53
Nucleic Acids Res., September 15, 2009; (2009) gkp750v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.