Little Elizabeth J, Babic Andrea C, Horton Nancy C
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
Structure. 2008 Dec 10;16(12):1828-37. doi: 10.1016/j.str.2008.09.009.
Control of replication, transcription, recombination and repair requires proteins capable of finding particular DNA sequences in a background of a large excess of nonspecific sequences. Such recognition can involve direct readout, with direct contacts to the bases of DNA, or in some cases through the less well-characterized indirect readout mechanisms. In order to measure the relative contributions of direct and indirect readout by a sequence specific endonuclease, HincII, a mutant enzyme deficient in a direct contact, was characterized, and surprisingly showed no loss of sequence specificity. The three dimensional crystal structure shows the loss of most of the direct readout contacts to the DNA, possibly capturing an early stage in target site recognition using predominately indirect readout to prescreen sites before full sequence interrogation.
复制、转录、重组及修复的调控需要蛋白质能够在大量非特异性序列的背景中找到特定的DNA序列。这种识别可涉及直接读出,即与DNA的碱基直接接触,或者在某些情况下通过特征不太明确的间接读出机制。为了测定序列特异性内切酶HincII直接读出和间接读出的相对贡献,对一种缺乏直接接触的突变酶进行了表征,令人惊讶的是,该突变酶并未丧失序列特异性。三维晶体结构显示,与DNA的大多数直接读出接触都已丧失,这可能捕捉到了靶位点识别的早期阶段,即在对完整序列进行询问之前,主要利用间接读出对位点进行预筛选。