Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Protein Purification-free Method of Binding Affinity Determination by Microscale Thermophoresis
Published on: August 15, 2013
The competitive binding of STAT3 and NF-kappaB on an overlapping DNA binding site
1Department of Cell Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 35294, USA.
Abstract:
Interleukin-1 (IL-1) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), two early-response cytokines expressed during an acute inflammatory reaction, regulate the expression of several acute phase proteins (APP) in the liver. IL-1 relays its signal to specific genes via NF-kappaB, whereas IL-6 sends its signal to the nucleus via STAT1alpha and STAT3. Interestingly, overlapping binding sites for STAT3 and NF-kappaB can be found on promoters of several APP genes. We show here that both STAT3 and NF-kappaB are active during inflammation and are capable of binding to a STAT3/NF-kappaB overlapping DNA motif derived from the alpha2-macroglobulin gene promoter. In vitro binding assays demonstrated that NF-kappaB competes with STAT3 binding on this probe. Our results suggest that these transcription factors regulate each others' function through competition for overlapping DNA binding sites.
Related Concept Videos
Conserved Binding Sites
Binding sites are often located in large pockets, and if their location on a protein’s surface is unknown, it can be predicted using various approaches. The energetic method computationally analyses the...
Cooperative Binding of Transcription Regulators
Co-activators and Co-repressors
NF-κB-dependent Signaling Pathway
NF-κB-dependent Signaling Mechanism
The heterodimer of NF-κB...
Cooperative Binding of Transcription Regulators
The JAK-STAT Signaling Pathway

