Drug-Inducible Control of Lethality Genes: A Low Background Destabilizing Domain Architecture Applied to the Gal4-UAS System in Drosophila

Destabilizing domains (DDs) are genetic tags that conditionally control the level of abundance of proteins-of-interest (POI) with specific stabilizing small-molecule drugs, rapidly and reversibly, in a wide variety of organisms. The amount of the DD-tagged fusion protein directly impacts its molecular function. Hence, it is important that the background levels be tightly regulated in the absence of any drug. This is especially true for classes of proteins that function at extremely low levels, such as lethality genes involved in tissue development and certain transcriptional activator proteins. Here, we establish the uninduced background and induction levels for two widely used DDs (FKBP and DHFR) by developing an accurate quantification method. We show that both DDs exhibit functional background levels in the absence of a drug, but each to a different degree. To overcome this limitation, we systematically test a double architecture for these DDs (DD-POI-DD) that completely suppresses the protein's function in an uninduced state, while allowing tunable functional levels upon adding a drug. As an example, we generate a drug-stabilizable Gal4 transcriptional activator with extremely low background levels. We show that this functions in vivo in the widely used Gal4-UAS bipartite expression system in Drosophila melanogaster. By regulating a cell death gene, we demonstrate that only the low background double architecture enables tight regulation of the lethal phenotype in vivo. These improved tools will enable applications requiring exceptionally tight control of protein function in living cells and organisms.