Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on September 20, 2006
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkl659
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© 2006 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.
Molecular Biology |
Multiple pathways regulate intracellular shuttling of MoKA, a co-activator of transcription factor KLF7
Child Health Institute of New Jersey, Robert W. Johnson Medical School 89 French Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA CEINGE Biotecnologie Avanzate 80131 Naples, Italy
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 732 235 9534; Fax: +1 732 235 9333; Email: ramirefr{at}umdnj.edu
Received August 21, 2006. Accepted August 28, 2006.
MoKA is a novel F-box containing protein that interacts with and stimulates the activity of transcription factor KLF7, a regulator of neuronal differentiation. MoKA accumulates throughout the cell and predominantly in the cytosol, consistent with the presence of several putative nuclear localization and export signals (NLSs and NESs). The present study was designed to refine the identity and location of the sequences responsible for MoKA intracellular shuttling and transcriptional activity. Forced expression of fusion proteins in mammalian cells demonstrated that only one of three putative NLSs potentially recognized by karyopherin receptors is involved in nuclear localization of MoKA. By contrast, three distinct sequences were found to participate in mediating cytoplasmic accumulation. One of them is structurally and functionally related to the leucine-rich export signal that interacts with the exportin 1 (CRM1) receptor. The other two export signals instead display either a novel leucine-rich sequence or an undefined peptide motif, and both appear to act through CRM1-independent pathways. Finally, transcriptional analyses using the chimeric GAL4 system mapped the major activation domain of MoKA to a highly acidic sequence that resides between the NLS and NES clusters.