Cooperative interactions between HOX and PBX proteins mediated by a conserved peptide motif

Homeoprotein products of the Hox/HOM gene family pattern the animal embryo through the transcriptional regulation of target genes. We have previously shown that the labial group protein HOXA-1 has intrinsically weak DNA-binding activity due to residues in the N-terminal arm of its homeodomain (M. L. Phelan, R. Sadoul, and M. S. Featherstone, Mol. Cell. Biol. 14:5066-5075, 1994). This observation, among others, suggests that HOX and HOM proteins require cofactors for stable interactions with DNA. We have demonstrated that a putative HOX cofactor, PBX1A, participates in cooperative DNA binding with HOXA-1 and the Deformed group protein HOXD-4. Three Abdominal-B class HOX proteins failed to cooperate with PBX1A. We mapped the interacting domain of HOXD-4 to the YPWMK pentapeptide motif, a conserved sequence found N terminal to the homeodomain of HOXA-1 and many other homeoproteins but absent from the Abdominal-B class. The naturally occurring fusion of the transcriptional activation domain of E2A with PBX1 creates an oncoprotein implicated in human pre-B-cell leukemias (M. P. Kamps, C. Murre, X.-H. Sun, and D. Baltimore, Cell 60:547-555, 1990; J. Nourse, J. D. Mellentin, N. Galili, J. Wilkinson, E. Starbridge, S. D. Smith, and M. L. Cleary, Cell 60:535-545, 1990). A pentapeptide mutation that abolished cooperative interaction with PBX1A in vitro also abrogated synergistic transcriptional activation with the E2A/PBX oncoprotein. The direct contact of PBX family members by the HOX pentapeptide is likely to play an important role in developmental and oncogenic processes.