RET finger protein enhances MBD2- and MBD4-dependent transcriptional repression.

We recently demonstrated that MBD4 possesses the ability to repress transcription through methyl-CpG and is associated with methylated promoters in the CDKN2A and MLH1 genes. In order to further investigate the role of MBD4 in methylation-based transcriptional repression, a yeast two-hybrid screening was performed, and the RET finger protein (RFP) was found to be one of the major proteins that interact with the transcriptional repression domain in MBD4. The effect of the MBD4-mediated transcriptional repression in methylated CDKN2A and MLH1 promoters was extremely enhanced by the overexpression of RFP. Furthermore, RFP forms a protein complex not only with MBD4 but also with MBD2 or MBD3 and was shown to enhance transcriptional repression through MBD2. These results suggest that RFP is a mediator connecting several MBD proteins and allowing the formation of a more potent transcriptional repressor complex. Because RFP has been detected at high levels in a variety of tumor cell lines as well as testis, and embryos, RFP may have an important role in the enhancement of transcriptional repression through MBD proteins in tumorigenesis, spermatogenesis, and embryogenesis.