Multi-drug tolerance is a key phenotypic property that complicates the sterilization of mammals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Previous studies have established that iniBAC, an operon that confers multi-drug tolerance to M. bovis BCG through an associated pump-like activity, is induced by the antibiotics isoniazid (INH) and ethambutol (EMB). An improved understanding of the functional role of antibiotic-induced genes and the regulation of drug tolerance may be gained by studying the factors that regulate antibiotic-mediated gene expression. An M. smegmatis strain containing a lacZ gene fused to the promoter of M. tuberculosis iniBAC (PiniBAC) was subjected to transposon mutagenesis. Mutants with constitutive expression and increased EMB-mediated induction of PiniBAC::lacZ mapped to the lsr2 gene (MSMEG6065), a small basic protein of unknown function that is highly conserved among mycobacteria. These mutants had a marked change in colony morphology and generated a new polar lipid. Complementation with multi-copy M. tuberculosis lsr2 (Rv3597c) returned PiniBAC expression to baseline, reversed the observed morphological and lipid changes, and repressed PiniBAC induction by EMB to below that of the control M. smegmatis strain. Microarray analysis of an lsr2 knockout confirmed upregulation of M. smegmatis iniA and demonstrated upregulation of genes involved in cell wall and metabolic functions. Fully 121 of 584 genes induced by EMB treatment in wild-type M. smegmatis were upregulated (“hyperinduced”) to even higher levels by EMB in the M. smegmatis lsr2 knockout. The most highly upregulated genes and gene clusters had adenine-thymine (AT)–rich 5-prime untranslated regions. In M. tuberculosis, overexpression of lsr2 repressed INH-mediated induction of all three iniBAC genes, as well as another annotated pump, efpA. The low molecular weight and basic properties of Lsr2 (pI 10.69) suggested that it was a histone-like protein, although it did not exhibit sequence homology with other proteins in this class. Consistent with other histone-like proteins, Lsr2 bound DNA with a preference for circular DNA, forming large oligomers, inhibited DNase I activity, and introduced a modest degree of supercoiling into relaxed plasmids. Lsr2 also inhibited in vitro transcription and topoisomerase I activity. Lsr2 represents a novel class of histone-like proteins that inhibit a wide variety of DNA-interacting enzymes. Lsr2 appears to regulate several important pathways in mycobacteria by preferentially binding to AT-rich sequences, including genes induced by antibiotics and those associated with inducible multi-drug tolerance. An improved understanding of the role of lsr2 may provide important insights into the mechanisms of action of antibiotics and the way that mycobacteria adapt to stresses such as antibiotic treatment.

Cyclin T1, together with the kinase CDK9, is a component of the transcription elongation factor P-TEFb which binds the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transactivator Tat. P-TEFb facilitates transcription by phosphorylating the carboxy-terminal domain (CTD) of RNA polymerase II. Cyclin T1 is an exceptionally large cyclin and is therefore a candidate for interactions with regulatory proteins. We identified granulin as a cyclin T1-interacting protein that represses expression from the HIV-1 promoter in transfected cells. The granulins, mitogenic growth factors containing repeats of a cysteine-rich motif, were reported previously to interact with Tat. We show that granulin formed stable complexes in vivo and in vitro with cyclin T1 and Tat. Granulin bound to the histidine-rich domain of cyclin T1, which was recently found to bind to the CTD, but not to cyclin T2. Binding of granulin to P-TEFb inhibited the phosphorylation of a CTD peptide. Granulin expression inhibited Tat transactivation, and tethering experiments showed that this effect was due, at least in part, to a direct action on cyclin T1 in the absence of Tat. In addition, granulin was a substrate for CDK9 but not for the other transcription-related kinases CDK7 and CDK8. Thus, granulin is a cellular protein that interacts with cyclin T1 to inhibit transcription.Human cyclin T1 is a component of positive transcription elongation factor b (P-TEFb) and plays a key role in the activation of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transcription by the viral protein Tat (trans-activator of transcription). Cyclin T1 was first isolated as a Tat-binding protein (61) and an orthologue of Drosophila cyclin T (39, 46, 47). P-TEFb contains cyclin T1 and the cyclin-dependent kinase CDK9. This kinase phosphorylates the carboxy-terminal domain (CTD) of the large subunit of RNA polymerase II, thereby facilitating the transition of polymerase II into a productive elongation mode (22, 43, 44, 48-50, 55, 70). The stimulation by Tat of HIV-1 transcriptional elongation and replication is dependent on P-TEFb that contains functional CDK9 and cyclin T1 (9, 11).CDK9 also associates with two additional related cyclins, T2a and T2b, which share their first 642 amino acids. Cyclin T2-CDK9 complexes phosphorylate polymerase II but do not participate in HIV transactivation. The cyclin boxes in the N-terminal regions of cyclins T1 and T2 are 81% identical, while their C-terminal regions are less conserved (47). In spite of this high degree of identity, Tat fails to bind to the T2 cyclins because they lack a crucial cysteine residue at position 261 (14,62). This cysteine is in the Tat-TAR recognition motif of human cyclin T1 that is necessary for its interactions with Tat and TAR, the transactivation response element in the 5Ј untranslated region of all HIV-1 mRNAs (for a review, see reference 26).The activity of the ternary complex P-TEFb-Tat-TAR is modulated by multiple interactions among its components (10,13,22,68). Furthermore, cyclin T1 and CDK9 are present in large...

RNA helicase A (RHA) is a multifunctional protein involved in various nuclear processes such as transcription and RNA export. It is believed that the interacting factors play important roles in determining the functional specificity of RHA. Here we show that RHA directly interacts with double-stranded (ds) nucleic acids (NAs) and assembles complexes with topoisomerase IIalpha. First, electrophoresis mobility shift assays demonstrate that RHA interacts with dsDNAs of different lengths ranging from 15 to 104 bp. Secondly, the binding of RHA to closed circular dsDNA stimulates the relaxation reaction catalyzed by either calf thymus topoisomerase I or HeLa topoisomerase IIalpha. Thirdly, immunoprecipitation, coupled with western blot analysis using anti-RHA and anti-topoisomerase IIalpha antibodies, shows that RHA and topoisomerase IIalpha assemble a complex in the presence of as yet unknown RNA molecules and additional protein factors such as Ubc9. Our observation suggests physical and functional interaction between RHA and topoisomerase IIalpha, which, perhaps, play important roles in regulating chromatin structure. The putative role of RHA-topoisomerase IIalpha complex in RNA polymerase II-mediated transcription is discussed.

HIV-1 Tat is able to form a ternary complex with P/CAF and p300 and increase the affinity for CDK9/P-TEFb CTD kinase complex. Our previous study demonstrated that Tat binds to p300/CBP in the minimal HAT domain (aa 1253-1790) and that the interaction results in a change of conformation on p300/CBP. Here, we show that the Tat-p300 interaction increases the HAT activity of p300 on histone H4 that is associated with nucleosomal DNA and not with free histones. Nucleosomal histone H4 was acetylated on lysines 8, 12, and 16. Acetylation of H4 was inhibited by Lys-coenzyme A (CoA), a selective inhibitor of p300 acetyltransferase activity. Unexpectedly, we also found that Tat could autoacetylate itself, which was specific to lysine residues 41 and 71. Peptides lacking these two lysines could not enhance the HAT activity of p300. Comparison of the sequences of Tat with other HIV-1 clades and HAT containing transcription factors indicated sequence identity in the acetyl-CoA binding motif A, KGXG. Furthermore, when utilizing an in vitro transcription assay, as well as a Tat mutant virus, we found that ectopic expression of only wild-type Tat in the presence of p300, and not a lysine 41 Tat mutant, could activate HIV-1 chromatin DNA, as evidenced by the absence of HIV-1 virion antigen. Therefore, transcription of integrated viral DNA in vivo requires the HAT activity of coactivators that are modulated by Tat to derepress the HIV-1 chromatin structure and aid in activated transcription.

Background: Expression profiling holds great promise for rapid host genome functional analysis. It is plausible that host expression profiling in an infection could serve as a universal phenotype in virally infected cells. Here, we describe the effect of one of the most critical viral activators, Tat, in HIV-1 infected and Tat expressing cells. We utilized microarray analysis from uninfected, latently HIV-1 infected cells, as well as cells that express Tat, to decipher some of the cellular changes associated with this viral activator.

Drosophila maleless (MLE) is a member of helicase superfamily 2 and functions as a dosage compensation factor essential for the development of male flies. This function provides a good opportunity to investigate diverse biochemical activities associated with MLE in the context of a defined in vivo pathway, i.e., the transcriptional activation of X-linked genes. We have shown for the first time that MLE catalyzes the unwinding of both DNA and RNA and that MLE helicase activity is essential for its in vivo function. Also, we have provided evidence that MLE stimulates the transcriptional activity of roX2 on the X chromosome. We have also found that MLE interacts with dsDNA, topoisomerase II, and nucleosome. This observation supports a current model of dosage compensation: transcriptional activation of X-linked genes is causally associated with conformational change in the male X chromosome, subsequent to the targeted association of the dosage compensation complex (DCC).