Background: JH is a critical insect hormone, but its mechanism of action is contentious. Results: JH activates E75A through an intracellular pathway utilizing FTZ-F1 and GCE, which form a transcriptionally active heterodimer. Conclusion: FTZ-F1 functions as a competence factor that facilitates JH activation of gene expression. Significance: As a competence factor for multiple insect hormones, FTZ-F1 could be a mediator of hormonal cross-talk.

Background: JH signaling involves interactions between FTZ-F1 and candidate JH receptors MET and GCE. Results: Mutation of FTZ-F1 AF2 or LIXXL MET/GCE sequence disrupts interaction between the proteins. Conclusion: NR box-AF2 binding underlies FTZ-F1⅐MET and FTZ-F1⅐GCE heterodimer formation. Significance: Dissecting the interaction between FTZ-F1 and MET, GCE is critical to understanding the molecular basis of JH signaling.

Eukaryotic DNA replicates asynchronously, with discrete genomic loci replicating during different stages of S phase. Drosophila larval tissues undergo endoreplication without cell division, and the latest replicating regions occasionally fail to complete endoreplication, resulting in underreplicated domains of polytene chromosomes. Here we show that linker histone H1 is required for the underreplication (UR) phenomenon in Drosophila salivary glands. H1 directly interacts with the Suppressor of UR (SUUR) protein and is required for SUUR binding to chromatin in vivo. These observations implicate H1 as a critical factor in the formation of underreplicated regions and an upstream effector of SUUR. We also demonstrate that the localization of H1 in chromatin changes profoundly during the endocycle. At the onset of endocycle S (endo-S) phase, H1 is heavily and specifically loaded into late replicating genomic regions and is then redistributed during the course of endoreplication. Our data suggest that cell cycledependent chromosome occupancy of H1 is governed by several independent processes. In addition to the ubiquitous replication-related disassembly and reassembly of chromatin, H1 is deposited into chromatin through a novel pathway that is replication-independent, rapid, and locus-specific. This cell cycle-directed dynamic localization of H1 in chromatin may play an important role in the regulation of DNA replication timing.

No abstract

The early genes are a key group of ecdysone targets that function at the top of the signaling hierarchy. In the presence of ecdysone, early genes exhibit a highly characteristic rapid and powerful induction that represents a primary response. Multiple isoforms encoded by early genes then coordinate the activation of a larger group of late genes. While the general mechanism of ecdysone-dependent transcription is well characterized, it is not known whether a distinct mechanism governs the hormonal response of early genes. We previously found that one of the Drosophila early genes, E75, harbors multiple functional ecdysone response elements (EcREs). In this study we extended the analysis to Broad and E74 and found that EcRE multiplicity is a general feature of the early genes. Since most of the EcREs within early gene loci are situated distantly from promoters, we employed the chromosome conformation capture method to determine whether higher order chromatin structure facilitates hormonal activation. For each early gene we detected chromatin loops that juxtapose their promoters and multiple distant EcREs prior to ecdysone activation. Our findings suggest that higher order chromatin structure may serve as an important mechanism underlying the distinct response of early genes to ecdysone.