Identification of functional regions in the yeast transcriptional activator ADR1

The transcriptional activator ADR1 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a postulated DNA-binding protein that controls the expression of the glucose-repressible alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH2). Carboxy-terminal deletions of the ADR1 protein (1,323 amino acids in length) were used to localize its functional regions. The transcriptional activation region was localized to the N-terminal 220 amino acids of ADR1 containing two DNA-binding zinc finger motifs. In addition to the N terminus, a large part of the ADR1 sequence was shown to be essential for complete activation of ADH2. Deletion of the putative phosphorylation region, defined by ADR1c mutations that overcome glucose repression, did not render ADH2 expression insensitive to glucose repression. Instead, this region (amino acids 220 through 253) was found to be required by ADR1 to bypass glucose repression. These results suggest that ADR1c mutations enhance ADR1 function, rather than block an interaction of the putative phosphorylation region with a repressor molecule. Furthermore, the protein kinase CCR1 was shown to affect ADH2 expression when the putative phosphorylation region was removed, indicating that CCR1 does not act solely through this region. A functional ADR1 gene was also found to be necessary for growth on glycerol-containing medium. The N-terminal 506 amino acids of ADR1 were required for this newly identified function, indicating that ADH2 activation and glycerol growth are controlled by separate regions of ADR1.