The mammalian formin, mDia1, is an actin nucleation factor. Experiments in cells and in vitro show that the N-terminal region potently inhibits nucleation by the formin homology 2 (FH2) domain-containing C terminus and that RhoA binding to the N terminus partially relieves this inhibition. Cellular experiments suggest that potent inhibition depends upon the presence of the diaphanous auto-regulatory domain (DAD) C-terminal to FH2. In this study, we examine in detail the N-terminal and C-terminal regions required for this inhibition and for RhoA relief. Limited proteolysis of an N-terminal construct from residues 1-548 identifies two stable truncations: 129 -548 and 129 -369. Analytical ultracentrifugation suggests that 1-548 and 129 -548 are dimers, whereas 129 -369 is monomeric. All three N-terminal constructs inhibit nucleation by the full C terminus. Although inhibition by 1-548 is partially relieved by RhoA, inhibition by 129 -548 or 129 -369 is RhoA-resistant. At the C terminus, DAD deletion does not affect nucleation but decreases inhibitory potency of 1-548 by 20,000-fold. Synthetic DAD peptide binds both 1-548 and 129 -548 with similar affinity and partially relieves nucleation inhibition. C-terminal constructs are stable dimers. Our conclusions are as follows: 1) DAD is an affinity-enhancing motif for auto-inhibition; 2) an N-terminal domain spanning residues 129 -369 (called DID for diaphanous inhibitory domain) is sufficient for autoinhibition; 3) a dimerization region C-terminal to DID increases the inhibitory ability of DID ; and 4) DID alone is not sufficient for RhoA relief of auto-inhibition, suggesting that sequences N-terminal to DID are important to RhoA binding. An additional finding is that FH2 domain-containing constructs of mDia1 and mDia2 lose >75% nucleation activity upon freeze-thaw.Formin proteins are emerging as regulators of many cellular actin-based structures (1, 2). Biochemically, formins exert several effects on actin polymerization dynamics, including acceleration of filament nucleation from monomers, inhibition of barbed end elongation rate, inhibition of complete barbed end capping by heterodimeric capping protein, and filament severing (3-10). These in vitro activities are generally considered to result from the ability of formins to bind at or near the filament barbed end and to move processively with the barbed end as it elongates (11, 12). Essential to these properties is the formin homology 2 (FH2) 1 domain, a 400-residue region generally found in the C-terminal half of the protein. Biochemical and structural studies show that the FH2 domain is dimeric for several formins (10,13,14), although longer constructs of the budding yeast formin, Bni1p, can tetramerize (6). Mammals possess 15 formin genes, in seven distinct phylogenetic groups (15). For one mammalian formin, mDia1, the mechanisms regulating effects on actin have begun to be elucidated. The in vitro nucleation activity of the FH2-containing C terminus of mDia1 is inhibited potently by inclusion of a separate polyp...