Contortions of a DNA strand caused by the binding of a protein affect how a second protein binds — a phenomenon that may regulate gene expression.
Sunney Xie at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his group used fluorescence microscopy to observe interactions between proteins and DNA at the single-molecule level. The authors showed that one protein could stabilize or destabilize a second protein's attachment to DNA. The proteins do not interact directly. Rather, one widens or narrows grooves along the DNA helix, affecting the binding of another protein as far away as 30 base pairs. Such allosteric interactions also occurred in live bacterial cells.
Proteins that bind DNA are often involved in gene regulation, and these interactions may be a mechanism in its fine-tuning.
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Dance of DNA-binding proteins. Nature 494, 285 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/494285b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/494285b
