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Published on: March 23, 2010
Direct Single-Molecule Observation of Sequential DNA Bending Transitions by the Sox2 HMG Box
Mahdi Muhammad Moosa1, Phoebe S Tsoi2, Kyoung-Jae Choi3
1Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. Mahdi.Moosa@bcm.edu.
Abstract:
Sox2 is a pioneer transcription factor that initiates cell fate reprogramming through locus-specific differential regulation. Mechanistically, it was assumed that Sox2 achieves its regulatory diversity via heterodimerization with partner transcription factors. Here, utilizing single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy, we show that Sox2 alone can modulate DNA structural landscape in a dosage-dependent manner. We propose that such stoichiometric tuning of regulatory DNAs is crucial to the diverse biological functions of Sox2, and represents a generic mechanism of conferring functional plasticity and multiplicity to transcription factors.
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