The m-Bop protein encoded by the mouse Bop gene is strongly expressed in heart and skeletal muscle, and recent studies with Bop knockout mice have demonstrated that m-Bop is essential for cardiogenesis in vivo and can act as a HDAC-dependent repressor in vitro. In the present studies, m-Bop was observed to interact with skNAC, a reported transcriptional activator specific to heart and skeletal muscle. The amino-terminal S region of the split S-ET domain of m-Bop as well as the MYND domain were required for interaction with skNAC in both the two-hybrid system and in coimmunoprecipitation experiments from cultured mammalian cells. As shown previously for interaction of the MYND domain-containing transcriptional corepressor, BS69, with several viral and cellular oncoproteins, a PXLXP motif in skNAC was required for interaction with mBop. Similar kinetics of induction and localization of m-Bop and skNAC during the induction of myogenesis in cultured C2C12 cells suggests a possible associated role for these proteins during this process.The control of skeletal and cardiac maturation is ordered in a complex cascade of transcriptional activation and repression. The MyoD and MEF2 families of transcription factors dictate important developmental events that result in the formation of mature skeletal muscle. The MyoD family is comprised of the basic helix-loop-helix proteins MyoD, Myf5, MRF4, and myogenin. These myogenic regulators form heterodimers with the ubiquitous basic helix-loop-helix E proteins that subsequently activate key elements needed for the myogenic program (1). The MEF2 family is defined by the MADS domain and consists of MEF2A, MEF2B, MEF2C, and MEF2D. Members of the MEF2 family are expressed in tissues besides skeletal muscle including cardiac tissue, neurons, and T cells (2). Together, the MyoD and MEF2 families cooperate directly and indirectly to transduce the requisite signals for proper skeletal muscle formation.The discovery of chamber-specific transcription factors, such as the Hand1 and Hand2 proteins, has revealed the complex nature of cardiac transcriptional regulation (3). The list of genes that correspond to specific cardiac defects continues to grow, whereas the molecular nature of these defects remains largely elusive (4). To further understand the molecular underpinnings of cardiac development, it is critical to identify the relationships of transcriptional regulators shown to be important in cardiac morphogenesis.The Bop gene encodes distinct proteins expressed in skeletal and cardiac muscle, as well as in cytotoxic T lymphocytes. The Bop proteins found in skeletal muscle (m-Bop) and cytotoxic T lymphocytes (t-Bop) are identical over 90% of their primary amino acid sequence, differing only at their extreme amino terminus (5). Bop contains the evolutionarily conserved MYND and SET domains found in transcriptional regulators linked to development, chromatin stability, and cancer. The MYND domains in the transcriptional regulators ETO (MTG8) and BS69 function as protein-protein interaction d...