The two primary papers (Weiss, M. A., 1990. "Thermal Unfolding Studies of a Leucine Zipper Domain and Its Specific DNA Complex: Implications for Scissor's Grip Recognition." Biochemistry 29, 8020-8024 and Weiss, M. A., Ellenberger, T., Wobbe, C. R., Lee, J. P., Harrison, S. C., and Struhl, K., 1990. "Folding transition in the DNA-binding domain of GCN4 on specific binding to DNA." Nature 347, 575-578), to be discussed 2/28/96, present experiments concerning the coupling of the folding of leucine zippers to their binding to DNA. We are interested in the experiments, the thermodynamics, and the implications for regulation. The background papers explore different ways to modulate the stability and specificity of leucine zippers.
Background Area (paper) "Discovery" of leucine zippers (Landschulz et al., 1988) Crystal structure of GCN4 (Ellenberger et al., 1992) Specificity of homo- and hetero-dimerization in fos/jun (O'Shea et al., 1992) Structural adjustments on the DNA side (Paolella et al., 1994) Modulation of bZIP folding/binding by Tax (Perini et al., 1995) Specific vs. non-specific folding (Johnson et al., 1994) More detailed thermodynamics (Thompson et al., 1993) Alternate helical forms (Harbury et al., 1993) More detailed NMR work (Saudek et al., 1991)Ellenberger, T. E., Brandl, C. J., Struhl, K., and Harrison, S. C. (1992). "The GCN4 Basic Region Leucine Zipper Binds DNA as Dimer of Uninterrupted alpha Helices: Crystal Structure of the Protein-DNA Complex." Cell 71, 1223-1237.
Harbury, P. H., Zhang, T., Kim, P. S., and Alber, T. (1993). "A Switch Between Two-, Three-, and Four-Stranded Coiled Coils in GCN4 Leucine Zipper Mutants." Science 262, 1401-1407.
Johnson, N. P., Lindstrom, J., Baase, W. A., and von Hippel, P. H. (1994). "Double-stranded DNA templates can induce alpha-helical conformation in peptides containing lysine and alanine: Functional implications of leucine zipper and helix-loop-helix transcriptional factors." Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 91, 4840-4844.
Landschulz, W. H., Johnson, P. F., and McKnight, S. L. (1988). "The Leucine Zipper: A Hypothetical Structure Common to a New Class of DNA Binding Proteins." Science 240, 1759-1764.
O'Shea, E. K., Rutkowski, R., and Kim, P. S. (1992). "Mechanism of Specificity in the Fos-Jun Oncoprotein Heterodimer." Cell 68, 699-708.
Paolella, D. N., Palmer, C. R., and Schepartz, A. (1994). "DNA targets for certain bZIP proteins distinguished by an intrinsic bend." Science 264, 1130-1133.
Perini, G., Wagner, S., and Green, M. R. (1995). "Recognition of bZIP proteins by the human T-cell leukaemia virus transactivator Tax." Nature 376, 602-605.
Saudek, V., Pasley, H. S., Gibson, T., Gausepohl, H., Frank, R., and Pastore, A. (1991). "Solution Structure of the Basic Region from the Transcriptional Activator GCN4." Biochemistry 30, 1310-1317.
Thompson, K. S., Vinson, C. R., and Freire, E. (1993). "Thermodynamic Characterization of the Structural Stability of the Coiled-Coil Region of the bZIP Transcription Factor GCN4." Biochemistry 32, 5493-5496.