title: Cysteine 397 plays important roles in the folding of the neuron-restricted silencer factor/RE1-silencing transcription factor.
abstract: The neuron-restrictive silencer factor/RE1-silencing transcription factor (NRSF/REST) is regarded as not only a key transcriptional repressor but also an activator in neuron gene expression by specifically interacting with neuron-restrictive silencer element (NRSE/RE1) dsDNA and small NRSE/RE1 dsRNA, respectively. But its exact mechanism remains unclear. One major problem is that it is hard to obtain its functional multiple zinc finger (ZnF) domains in a large quantity for further structural studies. To address this issue, in this study, we for the first time attained soluble NRSF/REST functional domains named as ZnF5-8, ZnF4-8, ZnF3-8 and ZnF2-8 containing four, five, six and seven ZnF motifs in tandem, respectively, by using Circular Dichroism (CD) spectrum and two-dimensional (2D) nucleic magnetic resonance (NMR) (1)H-(1)H NOESY spectrum to monitor the folding of each single ZnF peptide. The data indicated that the residue cysteine 397 (Cys397) plays important roles in the global folding of NRSF/REST multiple ZnFs domain.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Bio-organic and Natural Product Chemistry, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 345 Lingling Road, Shanghai 200032, China.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Xiaotian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.forename: Zhongzheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Zhangzhou
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Wenxian
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lan
authors.forename: Houming
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Chunyang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002942:Circular Dichroism; D003545:Cysteine / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D051379:Mice; D009474:Neurons / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D019906:Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Biomolecular; D017510:Protein Folding; D012097:Repressor Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D037941:Silencer Elements, Transcriptional; D016335:Zinc Fingers; D000099229:RE1-Silencing Transcription Factor
chemical_list: D003545:Cysteine; D012097:Repressor Proteins; D000099229:RE1-Silencing Transcription Factor