Studies of Cys,-His2 zinc finger domains have revealed that the structures of individual finger domains in solution determined by NMR spectroscopy are strikingly similar to the structure of fingers bound to DNA determined by X-ray diffraction. Therefore, detailed structural analyses of single finger domains that contain amino acid substitutions known to affect DNA binding in the whole protein can yield information concerning the structural ramifications of such mutations. We have used this approach to study two mutants in the N-terminal finger domain of ADRl, a yeast transcription factor that contains two Cys2-His2 zinc finger sequences spanning residues 102-159. Two point mutants at position 118 in the N-terminal zinc finger (ADRlb: 102-130) that adversely affect the DNA-binding activity of ADRl have previously been identified: H118A and H118Y. The structures of wild-type ADRlb and the two mutant zinc finger domains were determined using two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and distance geometry and were refined using a complete relaxation matrix method approach (REPENT) to improve agreement between the models and the nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy data from which they were generated. The molecular architecture of the refined wild-type ADRlb domain is presented in detail. Comparisons of wild-type ADRlb and the two mutants revealed that neither mutation causes a significant structural perturbation. The structures indicate that the DNA binding properties of the His 118 mutants are dependent on the identity of the side chain at position 118, which has been postulated to make a direct DNA contact in the wild-type ADRl protein. The results suggest that the identity of the side chain at the middle DNA contact position in Cys2-His2 zinc fingers may be changed with impunity regarding the domain structure and can affect the affinity of the protein-DNA interaction.Keywords: DNA binding; molecular architecture; NMR; protein-DNA interaction; zinc finger Analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence of the Xenprotein (Miller et al., 1985) and that zinc was required for opus transcription factor TFIIIA in the mid-1980s revealed sequence specific DNA binding (Hanas et al., 1983). that it contains nine tandem repeats of the consensus seThese and other findings were synthesized in the zinc fin-
quence (Y ,F)-X-C-X2,4-C-X3-F-X5-L-X2-H-X3.5-H-X2-6ger hypothesis that proposed each of the consensus re- (Brown et al., 1985;Miller et al., 1985). It was further peats binds a zinc ion through the conserved cysteine and noted that when purified in the absence of metal-chelathistidine residues to form a stable structural domain that ing agents, 7-1 1 moles of zinc co-purified per mole of is responsible for the DNA-binding activity of the transcription factor (Brown et al., 1985;Miller et al., 1985).
~~Since that time, a large number of Cysz-His2 zinc finger finger sequences (Berg, 1990).H-bonds, hydrogen bonds; COSY, correlation spectroscopy; RELAY, relayed coherence transfer spectroscopy; TOCSY, total co...