Abstract
The MerR-family proteins represent a unique family of bacteria transcription factors (TFs), which activate transcription in a manner distinct from canonical ones. Here, we report a cryo-EM structure of a B. subtilis transcription activation complex comprising B. subtilis six-subunit (2αββ‘ωε) RNA Polymerase (RNAP) core enzyme, σA, a promoter DNA, and the ligand-bound B. subtilis BmrR, a prototype of MerR-family TFs. The structure reveals that RNAP and BmrR recognize the upstream promoter DNA from opposite faces and induce four significant kinks from the −35 element to the −10 element of the promoter DNA in a cooperative manner, which restores otherwise inactive promoter activity by shortening the length of promoter non-optimal −35/−10 spacer. Our structure supports a DNA-distortion and RNAP-non-contact paradigm of transcriptional activation by MerR TFs.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 6284 |
Journal | Nature communications |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2020 |
Funding
The work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the CAS to Y.Z. (XDB29020000), the National Key Research and Development Program of China to Y.Z. (2018YFA0900701), the Shanghai Science and technology innovation program to Y.Z. (19JC1415900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Y.Z. (31822001 and 31970040) and to Q.L. (81973399), and the Leading Science Key Research Program of CAS to Y.Z. (QYZDB-SSW-SMC005), and the Shanghai “Rising Stars of Medical Talent” Youth Development Program to Q.L. (Youth Medical Talents—Clinical Pharmacist Program), and grants from the National Institutes of Health of the United States to T.V.O. (GM038784-31 and CA193419). We thank Liangliang Kong and Fangfang Wang at the cryo-EM center of the National Center for Protein Science Shanghai (NCPSS) for assistance with data collection.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Chemistry
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Physics and Astronomy
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The cryo-EM structure of B. subtilis BmrR transcription activation complex
Fang, C. (Contributor), Li, L. (Contributor), Zhao, Y. (Contributor), Wu, X. (Contributor), Philips, S. J. (Contributor), You, L. (Contributor), Zhong, M. (Contributor), Shi, X. (Contributor), O’Halloran, T. V. (Contributor), Li, Q. (Contributor) & Zhang, Y. (Contributor), Protein Data Bank (PDB), Dec 16 2020
DOI: 10.2210/pdb7CKQ/pdb, https://www.wwpdb.org/pdb?id=pdb_00007ckq
Dataset