Abstract

- I aimed to isolate trans-acting factors involved in the basal expression level of eukaryotic genes. One of the yeast histidine biosynthetic gene, HIS5 was taken as a model for this study. HIS5 gene has a substantial basal level in amino acid rich medium and is derepressed if starved for any single amino acid. The derepression is mediated by cis-acting DNA sequences 5'-TGACTC-3' found in 5' non-transcribed region of the gene and trans-acting factors including GCN4 as positive factor and its negative factor GCDI 7, and GCNZ as a negative factor of GCD17. I first investigated the role of these trans-acting factors in HIS5 basal expression level by using HIS5-pH05 fusion in which expression of pH05 gene encoding inorganic phosphate-repressible acid phosphatase (APase) is regulated by HIS5 promoter. Strain with gcn2 or gcn4 mutation showed 3 to 4 fold lower APase activity than wild type. The level of APase activity was similar in gcn2 and gcn4 mutants. Trans-acting factors involved in basal level were identified by isolating 14 mutants showing increased expression of HISSPH05 fusion from gcn4 background. All the mutants carry a single nuclear recessive mutation and fall into four complementation groups, designated as bell (basal expression level), be12, be23 and be14.

진핵세포 유전자의 기초대사발현의 조절계를 밝히기 위한 일환으로, 효모의 histidine생합성계 효소의 구조유전자 HIS5를 이용하였다. HIS5 유전자는 충분한 아미노산 조건하에서는 발현이 억제되어 비교적 높은 기초발현만을 하나, 어떤 아미노산이 결핍되면 탈억제되어 높은 발현량을 보이며 탈억제는 cis의 작용인자인 promoter상의 5'-TGACTC-3' 및 trans 작용인자 GCN4와 GCD17 GCN2등이 관여한다. trans 작용인자들에 의한 HIS5 유전자의 발현량의 변화를 간단하게 측정하기 위하여, HIS5 promoter와 repressible acid phoshates(APase)의 구조유전자중 promoter를 제거한 DNA단편을 연결시켜 HIS5-PHO5 융합유전자를 이용하였다. gcn2 및 gcn4 변이주의 APase 활성은 야생주와 비교하여 3내지 4배 낮았으며, gcn2변이주와 gcn2 gcn4 이중변이주의 APase 활성은 유사하였다.

Keywords

• Trans-acting factor;
• basal expression level;
• repressible acid phosphatase;
• complementation group