BF-1 Interferes with Transforming Growth Factor β Signaling by Associating with Smad Partners

Abstract

The winged-helix (WH) BF-1 gene, which encodes brain factor 1 (BF-1) (also known as foxg1), is essential for the proliferation of the progenitor cells of the cerebral cortex. Here we show that BF-1-deficient telencephalic progenitor cells are more apt to leave the cell cycle in response to transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) and activin. We found that ectopic expression of BF-1 in vitro inhibits TGF-β mediated growth inhibition and transcriptional activation. Surprisingly, we found that the ability of BF-1 to function as a TGF-β antagonist does not require its DNA binding activity. Therefore, we investigated whether BF-1 can inhibit Smad-dependent transcriptional responses by interacting with Smads or Smad binding partners. We found that BF-1 does not interact with Smads. Because the identities of the Smad partners mediating growth inhibition by TGF-β are not clearly established, we examined a model reporter system which is known to be activated by activin and TGF-β through Smads and the WH factor FAST-2. We demonstrate that BF-1 associates with FAST-2. This interaction is dependent on the same region of protein which mediates its ability to interfere with the antiproliferative activity of TGF-β and with TGF-β-dependent transcriptional activation. Furthermore, the interaction of FAST-2 with BF-1 is mediated by the same domain which is required for FAST-2 to interact with Smad2. We propose a model in which BF-1 interferes with transcriptional responses to TGF-β by interacting with FAST-2 or with other DNA binding proteins which function as Smad2 partners and which have a common mode of interaction with Smad2.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Abeel Mangi and Gabriela Balas for valuable assistance with these studies, M. Whitman and L. Freedman for providing reporter constructs, and R. Benezra and S. Li for critical review of the manuscript.

This work was supported by grants from the NIH to E.L. (HD29584), C.D. (F32NS10313), and MSKCC (Cancer Center Support Grant).