Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-Induced Formation of Transcription Factor Complex ERSF Including NF-Y (CBF) and Activating Transcription Factors 6α and 6β That Activates the Mammalian Unfolded Protein Response

Abstract

The levels of molecular chaperones and folding enzymes in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) are controlled by a transcriptional induction process termed the unfolded protein response (UPR). The mammalian UPR is mediated by the cis-acting ER stress response element (ERSE), the consensus sequence of which is CCAAT-N₉-CCACG. We recently proposed that ER stress response factor (ERSF) binding to ERSE is a heterologous protein complex consisting of the constitutive component NF-Y (CBF) binding to CCAAT and an inducible component binding to CCACG and identified the basic leucine zipper-type transcription factors ATF6α and ATF6β as inducible components of ERSF. ATF6α and ATF6β produced by ER stress-induced proteolysis bind to CCACG only when CCAAT is bound to NF-Y, a heterotrimer consisting of NF-YA, NF-YB, and NF-YC. Interestingly, the NF-Y and ATF6 binding sites must be separated by a spacer of 9 bp. We describe here the basis for this strict requirement by demonstrating that both ATF6α and ATF6β physically interact with NF-Y trimer via direct binding to the NF-YC subunit. ATF6α and ATF6β bind to the ERSE as a homo- or heterodimer. Furthermore, we showed that ERSF including NF-Y and ATF6α and/or β and capable of binding to ERSE is indeed formed when the cellular UPR is activated. We concluded that ATF6 homo- or heterodimers recognize and bind directly to both the DNA and adjacent protein NF-Y and that this complex formation process is essential for transcriptional induction of ER chaperones.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Ron Prywes (Columbia University) for providing us with anti-ATF6α antibody. We thank Masako Nakayama, Seiji Takahara, and Tomoko Yoshifusa for technical assistance.

This work was supported in part by Research for the Future Program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.