The carboxy-terminal 30 amino acids of GAL4 are recognized by GAL80

In wild-type yeast the action of the transcriptional activator GAL4 is inhibited by GAL80, and galactose relieves this inhibition. We show that deletion mutants of GAL4 lacking 30 amino acids of the carboxyl terminus activate transcription constitutively, whereas other deletion mutants bearing the carboxy-terminal 30 amino acids are inhibited by GAL80. Moreover, GAL4 fragments bearing these 30 amino acids, when expressed from a strong promoter on multicopy plasmids, free the endogenous GAL4 from inhibition by GAL80. These and other results suggest that GAL80 recognizes the carboxy-terminal 30 amino acids of GAL4, forming a complex that, though bound to DNA, does not activate transcription.