Probing the informational and regulatory plasticity of a transcription factor DNA-binding domain.

ABSTRACT: Transcription factors have two functional constraints on their evolution: (1) their binding sites must have enough information to be distinguishable from all other sequences in the genome, and (2) they must bind these sites with an affinity that appropriately modulates the rate of transcription. Since both are determined by the biophysical properties of the DNA-binding domain, selection on one will ultimately affect the other. We were interested in understanding how plastic the informational and regulatory properties of a transcription factor are and how transcription factors evolve to balance these constraints. To study this, we developed an in vivo selection system in Escherichia coli to identify variants of the helix-turn-helix transcription factor MarA that bind different sets of bindi

SUBMITTER: Shultzaberger RK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3315485 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature