The Role of the Rad4-Rad23 Complex and Rad4 Ubiquitination in UV-Responsive Transcription

The Rad23/Rad4 protein complex plays a major role in DNA damage recognition during nucleotide excision repair (NER) in yeast. We recently showed that two distinct pathways contribute to efficient NER in yeast. The first operates independently of de novo protein synthesis and requires a nonproteolytic function of the 19S regulatory complex of the 26S proteasome and Rad23. The second pathway requires de novo protein synthesis, and relies on the activity of a newly identified Rad7-containing E3 ubiquitin ligase that ubiquitinates Rad4 in response to UV. Surprisingly, we found that cells deleted of either Rad23 or Rad4 caused reduced Rad4 and Rad23 mRNA levels respectively. We considered the possibility of an unexpected role of Rad23 and Rad4 in regulating the expression of genes involved in the transcriptional response to DNA damage. Gene expression profiling has suggested that Rad23 and Rad4 may function as a complex to affect transcription of a small subset of genes in response to UV damage. To determine how Rad4 and Rad23 contribute to the regulation of these genes, we have examined the occupancy of Rad4/Rad23 in their promoter regions by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), both in the presence and absence of UV damage. Our preliminary ChIP data suggests that the Rad4/Rad23 complex regulates a set of genes in response to UV light. We also proposed that the transcriptional regulatory activity of the Rad4-Rad23 complex required Rad4 ubiquitination. These arrays test this theory using the psocs mutant strain, which is unable to facilitate Rad4 ubiquitination after UV irradiation.

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Zhou Z, Humphryes N, van Eijk P, Waters R, Yu S, Kraehenbuehl R, Hartsuiker E, Reed SH