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Journal of Virology, November 1998, p. 9396-9399, Vol. 72, No. 11
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1870
Received 14 May 1998/Accepted 10 August 1998
Tax, the transforming protein of human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1), is required for strong activation of HTLV-1 transcription.
This activation is mediated through interaction with the KIX domain of
the cellular coactivator CREB binding protein (CBP). In this study we
examined the possibility that the Tax-KIX interaction may mediate
effects on cellular gene transcription in vivo, as a growing number of
cellular transcription factors have been shown to utilize CBP as a
coactivator. We tested the ability of Tax to deregulate the activity of
the cellular transcription factor, c-Myb, since both Tax and c-Myb
interact with the KIX domain of CBP. Our results show that in vivo, Tax
antagonizes the transcriptional activity of c-Myb and, reciprocally,
c-Myb antagonizes the transcriptional activity of Tax. Furthermore, c-Myb competes for KIX binding to Tax in vitro, indicating that these
two transcription factors bind CBP in a mutually exclusive manner. This
novel mechanism of transcriptional interference by Tax may promote
globally deregulated cellular gene expression in the HTLV-1-infected
cell, possibly leading to leukemogenesis.
The human T-cell leukemia virus type
1 (HTLV-1) is a retrovirus that is the causative agent of tropical
spastic paraparesis and adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) (22,
24). ATL is characterized by clonal proliferation of a
CD4+ T lymphocyte that typically carries a single copy of
the HTLV-1 proviral genome (14). The HTLV-1-encoded Tax
protein is critical for HTLV-1 pathogenesis (for a review, see
reference 11). Tax is a 40-kDa transcriptional
regulator protein required for viral transcription and has been shown
to deregulate a wide variety of cellular genes (for a review, see
references 10 and 11). Tax
deregulation of cellular gene expression is widely believed to be the
primary event in the initiation of HTLV-1-dependent leukemogenesis.
While the mechanism of Tax-mediated cellular transformation is poorly
understood, several molecular steps in Tax transcriptional activation
have recently been characterized. To activate transcription of the
HTLV-1 genome, Tax interacts with the cellular transcription factor
CREB bound to the three viral CRE promoter elements and also contacts
nucleotides immediately flanking the CREB binding site (1, 4, 7,
12, 18, 33, 34). Tax, in the context of this stable
promoter-bound complex, then serves as a high-affinity binding site for
recruitment of the coactivator CREB binding protein (CBP) (5, 15,
17). Although the precise function of CBP in the context of Tax
activation of HTLV-1 transcription has not been fully defined, several
lines of evidence suggest that CBP functions as a coactivator through
chromatin remodeling and recruitment of the general transcription
machinery (2, 21, 32).
CBP is a large nuclear protein, 2,441 amino acids in length, that
carries several discrete domains which bind many structurally unrelated
transcription factors. One of these domains, called KIX, is located
approximately between amino acids (aa) 450 and 700 of CBP. This region
of KIX serves as the major binding site for HTLV-1 Tax, as well as the
cellular transcription factors c-Myb, c-Jun, and
serine-133-phosphorylated CREB (3, 9, 15, 17, 20, 23, 30).
KIX aa 588 to 665 have been identified as the minimal region of KIX
that is sufficient for interaction with Tax in vivo (31).
This region of KIX contains a compact hydrophobic core structure
composed of three interacting In this study, we investigated the effect of Tax on the transcriptional
activity of the cellular transcription factor c-Myb, a protein which
has a primary role in regulation of hematopoietic cell growth,
differentiation, and transformation (19, 28). c-Myb has
previously been shown to interact with aa 590 to 669 of the KIX domain
(9), a region which significantly overlaps the minimal
region of the KIX domain required for Tax binding and corresponds to
the hydrophobic core region. We demonstrate here that Tax represses the
transcriptional activity of c-Myb and that the CBP binding region of
c-Myb (aa 185 to 360) is sufficient for the repression by Tax. We
further show that this CBP binding region of c-Myb effectively competes
with Tax for KIX binding in vitro, suggesting that the binding of these
two transcription factors to KIX is mutually exclusive. These data
provide evidence for Tax repression of a cellular transcription factor
through direct competition for CBP. This competition may promote global dysregulation of cellular genes in an HTLV-1-infected cell.
Tax represses the transcription function of c-Myb in vivo.
Since both Tax and c-Myb bind an extensively overlapping region of KIX,
we hypothesized that large amounts of Tax may bind to CBP, thus
antagonizing the transcription function of c-Myb. To test this idea,
transient transfection experiments were performed with the human T-cell
line Jurkat. The transcriptional activity of c-Myb was measured by
using a Myb-responsive luciferase reporter construct (13),
which carries five copies of a Myb-responsive element cloned
immediately upstream of the minimal E1B promoter (MRE-luc). Figure
1A shows that MRE-luc was active in
Jurkat cells, an expected result since the c-Myb protein is expressed
at high levels in this cell line (data not shown). Cotransfection of
increasing amounts of a Tax expression plasmid (pIEX
[27]) produced a 15-fold repression of transcription
from the Myb-responsive reporter plasmid. This repression by Tax
appeared to be dependent upon c-Myb in the cell, as deletion of the Myb
response elements abrogated the repression by Tax (data not shown).
Under precisely the same conditions that produced strong repression of
c-Myb-dependent gene expression, Tax strongly activated (15-fold) the
Tax-responsive viral CRE reporter plasmid (viral CRE-luc
[15]), indicating that Tax was functional in the assay
and was not toxic to the cells (Fig. 1A). Although Tax and c-Myb have
not previously been shown to interact, complex formation between these
two transcription factors in vivo might explain the observed c-Myb
repression by Tax. Cotransfection of a c-Myb expression plasmid,
however, did not rescue c-Myb transcriptional activity, suggesting that
the mechanism of Tax repression is indirect (data not shown).
0022-538X/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
The Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type 1 Oncoprotein
Tax Inhibits the Transcriptional Activity of c-Myb through Competition
for the CREB Binding Protein
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ABSTRACT
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TEXT
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helices (25). The
observation that free Tax protein binds to this domain of KIX, together
with the recognition of this domain by several cellular transcription
factors, raises the possibility that Tax may compete with these
transcriptional activator proteins for utilization of limiting CBP in
an HTLV-1-infected cell. Occupancy of the KIX domain by Tax may block
the binding of the other transcription factors, producing widespread
deregulation of cellular gene expression.

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FIG. 1.
Mutual transcriptional repression by Tax and the
cellular transcription factor c-Myb. (A) Tax represses the
transcriptional function of c-Myb. HTLV-1-negative Jurkat T cells were
transiently cotransfected (with Lipofectamine) with 500 ng of either
pMRE-luc (
) (13) or viral CRE-luc (
) (15)
reporter plasmids and the indicated amount of the Tax expression
plasmid (pIEX [27]). (B) c-Myb represses the
transcriptional function of Tax. CV-1 cells (at 60% confluency on
60-mm plates) were transiently cotransfected (with calcium phosphate)
with 1 µg of the HTLV-1 promoter reporter pLTR-luc (15)
and 1 µg of either the c-Myb (8) or Tax expression
plasmid. Cell extracts were assayed for luciferase activity. Reported
values represent the means ± standard errors (error bars) from
three independent experiments.
The CBP binding region of c-Myb is sufficient for Tax repression. A region of the c-Myb transcriptional activation domain has previously been shown to directly bind to the KIX domain to recruit CBP to c-Myb-responsive promoters (Fig. 2A) (9, 20). To more directly examine whether competition for CBP might account for Tax repression of c-Myb transcriptional activity, we fused the CBP binding region of c-Myb to the DNA binding domain of GAL4 (GAL4 [aa 1 to 147]-c-Myb [aa 185 to 360]; referred to hereafter as GAL4-c-Mybaa185-360). We hypothesized that this chimeric protein would activate transcription of a GAL4-responsive reporter construct through direct recruitment of CBP. Moreover, increasing amounts of Tax should compete for the available intracellular CBP, resulting in repression of GAL4-c-Mybaa185-360-dependent transcription. Figure 2B shows the results of a transient transfection assay in which pGAL4/c-Mybaa185-360 was cotransfected with a reporter plasmid carrying five copies of the GAL4-responsive element (p5× GAL4-luc) in Jurkat cells. Interestingly, the GAL4-c-Mybaa185-360 chimera activated transcription from the GAL4 reporter construct, indicating that the CBP binding region of c-Myb was sufficient for transcriptional activity. However, titration of the Tax expression plasmid resulted in repression of c-Mybaa185-360-dependent transcription in a dose-dependent fashion (Fig. 2B). As previously observed (Fig. 1A), maximal transcriptional repression occurred when 100 ng of the Tax expression plasmid, a concentration of Tax which should not cause squelching or toxicity to the cells, was cotransfected into the reaction mixture (Fig. 1A). These results strongly suggest that Tax inhibition of c-Myb transcriptional activity occurs through a mechanism dependent upon the c-Myb-CBP interaction.
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Tax and c-Myb compete for KIX in vitro. The observation that Tax and c-Myb both bind to the KIX domain provides strong support for the hypothesis that their binding to CBP is mutually exclusive, thus explaining their reciprocal repression in vivo. To directly test this hypothesis, we used the electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) to measure whether the CBP binding region of c-Myb can compete with Tax for binding to KIX. We have previously used the EMSA to show that purified Tax (35), in the context of CREB and the HTLV-1 viral CRE DNA, forms a high-affinity binding site for KIX (15). Under the conditions of the EMSA, KIX binds to the Tax-CREB-viral CRE ternary complex to form a slower-migrating quaternary complex (Fig. 3, lane 4). To test whether c-Myb can compete with Tax for binding to KIX, we titrated glutathione S-transferase (GST)-c-Mybaa185-360 into binding reaction mixtures containing the KIX-Tax-CREB-viral CRE quaternary complex. Figure 3 shows that increasing concentrations of purified GST-c-Mybaa185-360 in the binding reaction mixtures produced a dose-dependent reduction in the amount of KIX-containing quaternary complex, without affecting the Tax-CREB-viral CRE ternary complex (lanes 5 to 9). GST alone did not significantly affect the quaternary complex, indicating that c-Mybaa185-360 was specifically required for the KIX competition. These results show that the CBP binding region of c-Myb is sufficient for competition with Tax for KIX binding in vitro. The observation that GST-c-Mybaa185-360 did not form more slowly migrating complexes with the KIX-Tax-CREB-DNA complex indicates that Tax and c-Myb binding to KIX is mutually exclusive. Furthermore, GST-c-Mybaa185-360 did not affect the ternary complex containing Tax, indicating that Tax and c-Myb do not form a detectable complex in this assay. Together, these results suggest that through their common recognition of the KIX domain, Tax and c-Myb compete for utilization of CBP in vivo.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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We thank Linda Boxer for the Myb expression plasmid and MRE-luc reporter plasmid, K. T. Jeang for the Tax expression plasmid, and Ken Escudero for construction of the p5× GAL4-luc reporter plasmid. We also thank members of the laboratory for discussions and critical reading of the manuscript.
This work was supported by a grant (VM-170) from the American Cancer Society (to J.K.N.).
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FOOTNOTES |
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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1870. Phone: (970) 491-0420. Fax: (970) 491-0494. E-mail: jnyborg{at}vines.colostate.edu.
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