The Neurospora crassa White Collar-1 dependent blue light response requires acetylation of histone H3 lysine 14 by NGF-1.
Blue light-induced transcription in Neurospora crassa is regulated by the White Collar-1 (WC-1) photoreceptor. We report that residue K14 of histone H3 associated with the light-inducible albino-3 (al-3) promoter becomes transiently acetylated after photoinduction. This acetylation depends on WC-1. The relevance of this chromatin modification was directly evaluated in vivo by construction of a Neurospora strain with a mutated histone H3 gene (hH3(K14Q)). This strain phenocopies a wc-1 blind mutant and shows a strong reduction of light-induced transcriptional activation of both al-3 and vivid (vvd), another light-inducible gene. We mutated Neurospora GCN Five (ngf-1), which encodes a homologue of the yeast HAT Gcn5p, to generate a strain impaired in H3 K14 acetylation and found that it was defective in photoinduction. Together, our findings reveal a direct link between histone modification and light signaling in Neurospora and contribute to the developing understanding of the molecular mechanisms operating in light-inducible gene activation.
Grimaldi
Benedetto
B
Dipartimento di Genetica e Biologia Molecolare, Università di Roma La Sapienza, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Coiro
Pierluca
P
Filetici
Patrizia
P
Berge
Emanuela
E
Dobosy
Joseph R
JR
Freitag
Michael
M
Selker
Eric U
EU
Ballario
Paola
P
D000107:Acetylation; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000502:physiology*; D005656:Fungal Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology; D017930:Genes, Reporter; D051548:Histone Acetyltransferases / Q000502:physiology; D006657:Histones / Q000378:metabolism*; D008027:Light; D008239:Lysine; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020932:Nerve Growth Factor / Q000494:pharmacology*; D009492:Neurospora crassa / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology; D010786:Photoreceptor Cells; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000502:physiology*
D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D005656:Fungal Proteins; D006657:Histones; D014157:Transcription Factors; C105589:wc-1 protein, Neurospora crassa; D020932:Nerve Growth Factor; D051548:Histone Acetyltransferases; D008239:Lysine