Genetic analysis of GalR tetramerization in DNA looping during repressosome assembly

The Gal repressosome is a nucleoprotein complex consisting of 2 GalR dimers, 1 HU, and 1 DNA loop, which represses the transcription of the gal operon. We have adopted a structure-based genetic approach to complement ongoing physical studies of the complex. Homology-based and subsequent alanine-scanning mutageneses suggest that five residues in the DNA-distal subdomain of GalR dimer are important for repressosome formation. A further analysis of these and intragenic suppressors of looping-defective GalR mutants as well as gain-of-function mutants that permit repressosome assembly in the absence of HU show that GalR dimers contact each other in the repressosome in a partially stacked configuration.