The binding of the RNA polymerase III (pol III) transcription factor TFIIIC to the box A intragenic promoter element of tRNA genes specifies the placement of TFIIIB on upstream-lying DNA. In turn, TFIIIB recruits pol III to the promoter and specifies transcription initiating 17-19 base pairs upstream of box A. The resolution of the pol III transcription apparatus into recombinant TFIIIB, highly purified TFIIIC, and pol III is accompanied by a loss of precision in specifying where transcription initiation occurs due to heterogeneous placement of TFIIIB. In this paper we show that Nhp6a, an abundant high mobility group B (HMGB) family, non-sequencespecific DNA-binding protein in Saccharomyces cerevisiae restores transcriptional initiation fidelity to this highly purified in vitro system. Restoration of initiation fidelity requires the presence of Nhp6a prior to TFIIIB-DNA complex formation. Chemical nuclease footprinting of TFIIIC-and TFIIIB-TFIIIC-DNA complexes reveals that Nhp6a markedly alters the TFIIIC footprint over box A and reduces the size of the TFIIIB footprint on upstream DNA sequence. Analyses of unprocessed tRNAs from yeast lacking Nhp6a and its closely related paralogue Nhp6b demonstrate that Nhp6 is required for transcriptional initiation fidelity of some but not all tRNA genes, in vivo.The sites at which RNA polymerase III (pol III) 2 initiates tRNA gene transcription are specified by sequence-specific interactions of its two transcription factors, TFIIIC and TFIIIB, and by pol III itself. TFIIIC is a 520-kDa protein, containing six distinct subunits arranged into two globular subdomains, A (subunits Tfc1, Tfc4, and Tfc7) and B (subunits Tfc3, Tfc6, and Tfc8), which are connected by a flexible linker (Tfc8; see Refs. 1-3 for reviews). TFIIIC binds to two intragenic sequence elements, the start site-proximal box A (binding A) and the distal box B (binding B), which are optimally separated by 30 -60 bp. The B-box B interaction contributes nearly all of the affinity of TFIIIC for tRNA genes (K D Ͻ1 nM) (4). Nevertheless, it is the weak A-box A interaction that primarily specifies initiation 17-19 bp upstream of box A (5, 6). Specification is indirect; the A-box A interaction determines the placement of TFIIIB, which, in turn, recruits pol III. TFIIIB placement is mediated through an interaction between Tfc4 and the Brf1 subunit of TFIIIB. Brf1 forms a stable complex with TBP, and the major DNA contacts during TFIIIC-dependent assembly of TFIIIB upstream of the start site of transcription are mediated by TBP. Consistent with this role of TBP, the DNA segments occupied by TFIIIB (ϳbp Ϫ40 to bp Ϫ10, relative to predicted start sites of transcription) are uniformly AT-rich (Ͼ70% (7-9)).The notion that preferential sequence selection by TBP can occur during TFIIIC-dependent assembly of TFIIIB comes from in vivo and in vitro studies in which a shift in placement of a TATA box or partial TATA box shifts the start site accordingly but retains dependence on TFIIIC for transcription (10, 11). Pol III also cont...