Cooperative binding of heat shock transcription factor to the Hsp70 promoter in vivo and in vitro.

The minimal promoter of the Drosophila hsp70 gene contains a TATA box and two nonidentical HSE sequences, HSEI and HSEII, that synergistically activate the promoter. We have examined stereospecific alignment and spatial constraints in this promoter. Similar to deletion of HSEII, insertion in the spacer between the HSEs of 1 to 5 or 11 to 14 nucleotides (nt) reduced promoter activity to about 10%. In contrast, HSEII was capable of contributing to promoter activity when the spacer was either shortened by 2 or 4 nt or extended by 6 to 10 or 16 or 18 nt. Hence, half of the possible helical arrangements of HSEs are compatible, whereas the other half are essentially incompatible with efficient promoter function. HSEII was ineffective when its distance to HSEI was increased by more than 18 nt. In vitro, HSEII is a weak and HSEI a strong binding site for heat shock transcription factor HSF, and HSF binds to HSEII cooperatively. To find out whether the above periodicity reflects cooperative binding of HSF in vivo or represents the need of stereoalignment for synergistic activation of transcription, the weak HSF binding site HSEII was replaced with the strong binding site HSEI. This substitution greatly attenuated promoter periodicity, suggesting that the periodic effects are caused by cooperative binding of HSF to HSEII, and that stereoalignment of HSEs is not required for transcription activation. In agreement, in vitro assays using spacer mutants revealed cooperative binding of purified, recombinant HSF to HSEII with a similar periodicity as observed in vivo. Changing the distance between TATA and the HSEs did not produce promoter periodicity, indicating that stereoalignment of these elements is not important.