Transcriptional analysis of chromatin assembled with purified ACF and dNAP1 reveals that acetyl-CoA is required for preinitiation complex assembly.

To investigate the role of chromatin structure in the regulation of transcription by RNA polymerase II, we developed a chromatin transcription system in which periodic nucleosome arrays are assembled with purified recombinant ATP-utilizing chromatin assembly and remodeling factor (ACF), purified recombinant nucleosome assembly protein 1 (dNAP1), purified native core histones, plasmid DNA, and ATP. With this chromatin, we observed robust activation of transcription with three different transcription factor sets (nuclear factor kappaB p65 + Sp1, estrogen receptor, and Gal4-VP16) added either before or after chromatin assembly. In fact, the efficiency of activated transcription from the ACF + dNAP1-assembled chromatin was observed to be comparable with that from naked DNA templates or chromatin assembled with a crude Drosophila extract (S190). With ACF + dNAP1-assembled chromatin, we found that transcriptional activation is dependent upon acetyl-CoA. This effect was not seen with naked DNA templates or with crude S190-assembled chromatin. We further determined that acetyl-CoA is required at the time of preinitiation complex assembly but not during assembly of the chromatin template. These findings suggest that there is at least one key acetylation event that is needed to assemble a functional transcription preinitiation complex with a chromatin template.