Differential DNA affinity specifies roles for the origin recognition complex in budding yeast heterochromatin

  1. Madeleine A. Palacios DeBeer,
  2. Ulrika Müller, and
  3. Catherine A. Fox1
  1. Department of Biomolecular Chemistry, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

Abstract

The origin recognition complex (ORC) marks chromosomal positions as replication origins and is essential for replication initiation. At a few loci, the ORC functions in heterochromatin formation. We show that the ORC's two roles at the heterochromatic HMRa locus in Saccharomyces cerevisiae were regulated by differences in the ORC's interaction with its target site. At HMRa, a strong ORC-DNA interaction inhibited and delayed replication initiation but promoted heterochromatin formation, whereas a weak ORC-DNA interaction allowed for increased and earlier replication initiation but reduced heterochromatin formation. Therefore, the ORC's interaction with its target site could modulate ORC activity within a heterochromatin domain in vivo.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.

  • Corresponding author.

  • Article and publication are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1096703.

  • ↵1 E-MAIL cfox{at}facstaff.wisc.edu; FAX (608) 262-5253.

    • Accepted June 2, 2003.
    • Received March 24, 2003.
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This Article

  1. doi: 10.1101/gad.1096703 Genes & Dev. 17: 1817-1822 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

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