Truncated variants of the GCN4 transcription activator protein bind DNA with dramatically different dynamical motifs

The yeast protein GCN4 is a transcriptional activator in the basic leucine zipper (bZip) family, whose distinguishing feature is the "chopstick-like" homodimer of alpha helices formed at the DNA-binding interface. While experiments have shown that truncated versions of the protein retain biologically relevant DNA-binding affinity, we present the results of a computational study revealing that these variants show a wide variety of dynamical modes in their interaction with the target DNA sequence. We have performed all-atom molecular dynamics simulations of the full-length GCN4 protein as well as three truncated variants; our data indicate that the truncated mutants show dramatically different correlation patterns. We conclude that although the truncated mutants still retain DNA-binding ability, the bZip interface present in the full-length protein provides important stability for the protein-DNA complex.