Adenovirus E1a ras cooperation activity is separate from its positive and negative transcription regulatory functions

The E1a gene of adenovirus encodes two proteins, 289 and 243 amino acids long, which have positive (transactivator) and negative (enhancer repressor) RNA polymerase II transcriptional regulatory properties and cell transformation activities including cooperation with an activated ras gene. The E1a transforming functions more closely correlate with the repressor property than with transactivation in that both E1a proteins express the repressor and transformation functions while only the 289-amino-acid protein is an efficient transactivator. To understand whether the transcriptional regulatory activities of E1a are related to its ras cooperation activity, we generated a series of mutant E1a expression vectors by linker insertion mutagenesis of the 289-amino-acid protein. Here we describe a new class of mutants which although defective for enhancer repression still can cooperate with the ras oncogene in cell transformation. The mutants are also defective in transcription transactivation. Our data suggest that enhancer repression and transformation via ras cooperation are separate E1a functions and that cooperation with ras does not rely on either of the RNA polymerase II transcription regulatory functions of E1a. We also show that mutations which inactivate enhancer repression are not confirmed to a single critical domain necessary for repression. We therefore propose that the integrity of the overall configuration of the E1a proteins is important for the repression activity.