The yeast TATA-binding protein (TBP) core domain assembles with human TBP-associated factors into a functional TFIID complex.

In mammalian and Drosophila cells, the central RNA polymerase II general transcription factor TFIID is a multisubunit complex containing the TATA-binding protein (TBP) and TBP-associated factors (TAFs) bound to the conserved TBP carboxy-terminal core domain. TBP also associates with alternative TAFs in these cells to form general transcription factors required for initiation by RNA polymerases I and III. Although extracts of human HeLa cells contain little TBP that is not associated with TAFs, free TBP is readily isolated from yeast cell extracts. However, recent studies indicate that yeast TBP can also interact with other yeast polypeptides to form multiprotein complexes. We established stable human HeLa cell lines expressing yeast TBP and several yeast-human TBP hybrids to study TBP-TAF interactions. We found that the yeast TBP core domain assembles with a complete set of human TAFs into a stable TFIID complex that can support activated transcription in vitro. The fact that the yeast TBP core, which differs from human TBP core in approximately 20% of its amino acid residues, has the structural features required to form a stable complex with human TAFs implies that Saccharomyces cerevisiae probably contains TAFs that are structurally and functionally analogous to human TAFs. Surprisingly, the non-conserved amino terminus of yeast TBP inhibited association between the yeast core domain and human TAFs.