Histone chaperones Nap1 and Vps75 regulate histone acetylation during transcription elongation.

Histone chaperones function in chromatin assembly and disassembly, suggesting they have important regulatory roles in transcription elongation. The Saccharomyces cerevisiae proteins Nap1 and Vps75 are structurally related, evolutionarily conserved histone chaperones. We showed that Nap1 genetically interacts with several transcription elongation factors and that both Nap1 and Vps75 interact with the RNA polymerase II kinase, CTK1. Loss of NAP1 or VPS75 suppressed cryptic transcription within the open reading frame (ORF) observed when strains are deleted for the kinase CTK1. Loss of the histone acetyltransferase Rtt109 also suppressed ctk1-dependent cryptic transcription. Vps75 regulates Rtt109 function, suggesting that they function together in this process. Histone H3 K9 was found to be the important lysine that is acetylated by Rtt109 during ctk1-dependent cryptic transcription. We showed that both Vps75 and Nap1 regulate the relative level of H3 K9 acetylation in the STE11 ORF. This supports a model in which Nap1, like Vps75, directly regulates Rtt109 activity or regulates the assembly of acetylated chromatin. Although Nap1 and Vps75 share many similarities, due to their distinct interactions with SET2, Nap1 and Vps75 may also play separate roles during transcription elongation. This work sheds further light on the importance of histone chaperones as general regulators of transcription elongation.

Construction and Characterization of a Mutant of Single-chain Urokinase-type Plasminogen Activator Ser(175)-His(187)-mscu-PA

Single-chain urokinase-type plasminogen activator scu-PA is the precursor of double-chain urokinase tcu-PA , which has a much higher intrinsic catalytic activity than other zymogens of the serine protease family. To restore the "zymogen triad" of Asp-His-Ser in the serine protease family, the mutant gene of scu-PA mscu-PA, Ala(175)right curved arrow Ser(175), Tyr(187)right curved arrow His(187) was constructed by the method of oligonucleotide-directed, site-specific mutagenesis in order to reduce its intrinsic catalytic activity. mscu-PA was expressed in E. coli BL21. After denaturation and renaturation in vitro, the mscu-PA was purified to homogeneity by SP-Sepharose ion-exchange chromatography, Sephacryl S-200 chromatography and Benzamidine-Sepharose affinity adsorption. mscu-PA had the same activity to plasmin as scu-PA. The catalytic efficiency measured by k(cat)/K(m) to synthetic substrate S(2444) was 2.5-fold lower than that of scu-PA, and the activity against Glu-plasminogen was also reduced. After activation by plasmin, mtcu-PA and tcu-PA had similar catalytic efficiency against S(2444) and Glu-plasminogen. The results suggest that the intrinsic catalytic activity of mscu-PA be really reduced after restoring the "zymogen triad".

Construction of Urokinase Mutant Glu154-mtcu-PA and Characterization of Its Properties.

The recombinant single chain urokinase-type plasminogen activator (rscu-PA) and a mutant constructed by in vitro site-specific mutagenesis of Argl54 in rscu-PA to Glul54 (Glul54-mscu-PA) were both expressed in E. coli. The expressed products were both purified to homogeneity by in vitro denaturation and renaturation, followed by Zn(2+) selective precipitation and immuno-affinity chromatography. The plasmin sensitivity assay indicated that the activation of this single chain Glul54-mscu-PA by plasmin was essentially identical to that of rscu-PA. After activation by plasmin, the kinetic constants against synthetic substrate S2444 of the resulted two chain form of Glul54-mscu-PA (Glul54-mtcu-PA) and that of rscu-PA (rtcu-PA) were 87 &mgr;M and 80 &mgr;M, respectively, which indicated that the catalytic active site of the Glul54-mtcu-PA was not changed by the mutation. Whereas, both (125)I-fibrin plasma-clot lysis and fibrinogenolysis in plasma showed that the Glul54-mtcu-PA possessed a better affinity and selectivity for fibrin than rtcu-PA, even better than rscu-PA.