The Saccharomyces cerevisiae DAL80 repressor protein binds to multiple copies of GATAA-containing sequences (URSGATA)

Induced expression of the allantoin (DAL) catabolic genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been suggested to be mediated by interaction of three different types of promoter elements. First is an inducer-independent upstream activation sequence, UASNTR, whose operation is sensitive to nitrogen catabolite repression. The GLN3 product is required for UASNTR-mediated transcriptional activation. This site consists of two separated elements, each of which has a GATAA sequence at its core. Response of the DAL genes to inducer is mediated by a second type of cis-acting element, DAL UIS. The DAL82 and DAL81 genes are required for response to inducer; DAL82 protein is the UIS-binding protein. When only the UASNTR and UIS elements are present, DAL gene expression occurs at high levels in the absence of inducer. We, therefore, hypothesized that a third element, an upstream repressor sequence (URS) mediates maintenance of DAL gene expression at a low level when inducer is absent. Since the DAL and UGA genes are overexpressed and largely inducer independent in dal80 deletion mutants, we have suggested DAL80 protein negatively regulates a wide spectrum of nitrogen-catabolic gene expression, likely in conjunction with a URS element. Here we show that DAL80 protein binds to DAL3 and UGA4 upstream DNA sequences, designated URSGATA, consisting of two GATAA-containing sites separated by at least 15 bp. The preferred orientation of the sites is tail to tail, but reasonable binding activity is also observed with a head-to-tail configuration. URSGATA elements contain the sequence GATAA at their core and hence share sequence homology with UASNTR elements.