Open AccessYeast Recombination Enhancer Is Stimulated by Transcription Activation
Author(s) -
Sevinç Ercan,
Joseph C. Reese,
Jerry L. Workman,
Robert T. Simpson
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
molecular and cellular biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.14
H-Index - 327
eISSN - 1067-8824
pISSN - 0270-7306
DOI - 10.1128/mcb.25.18.7976-7987.2005
Subject(s) - biology , enhancer , chromatin , saccharomyces cerevisiae , genetics , transcription (linguistics) , transcription factor , gene conversion , recombination , homologous recombination , dna , gene , microbiology and biotechnology , linguistics , philosophy
Saccharomyces cerevisiae mating type switching is a gene conversion event that exhibits donor preference.MAT a cells chooseHML α for recombination, andMAT α cells chooseHMR a . Donor preference is controlled by the recombination enhancer (RE), located betweenHML α andMAT a on the left arm of chromosome III. A number ofa -cell specific noncoding RNAs are transcribed from the RE locus. Mcm1 and Fkh1 regulate RE activity ina cells. Here we show that Mcm1 binding is required for both the transcription of the noncoding RNAs and Fkh1 binding. This requirement can be bypassed by inserting another promoter into the RE. Moreover, the insertion of this promoter increases donor preference and opens the chromatin structure around the conserved domains of RE. Additionally, we determined that the level of Fkh1 binding positively correlates with the level of donor preference. We conclude that the role of Mcm1 in RE is to open chromatin around the conserved domains and activate transcription; this facilitates Fkh1 binding and the level of this binding determines the level of donor preference.