Multimerization of Hsp42p, a novel heat shock protein of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is dependent on a conserved carboxyl-terminal sequence.

Rap1p is a transcriptional regulator of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which plays roles in both transcriptional activation and silencing. To identify proteins involved in Rap1p-dependent regulation of transcription, we used the two-hybrid system to screen for Rap1p-interacting proteins. Two of the clones isolated from this screen encode a truncated protein with homology to small heat shock proteins (HSPs). Here we present an analysis of this novel S. cerevisiae HSP, which we name Hsp42p. Expression of HSP42 is regulated by a range of stress conditions similar to S. cerevisiae HSP26, with which Hsp42p shares most homology. However, HSP42 expression is more sensitive to increased salt concentration and to starvation and, in contrast to HSP26 is expressed in unstressed cells. Hsp42p interacts with itself in the two-hybrid assay. This interaction is dependent on a hydrophobic region which is conserved among small HSPs. Using bacterially expressed Hsp42p fusion proteins. we demonstrate that this is a direct interaction. Fractionation of yeast protein extracts by size demonstrates that all of the Hsp42p in these extracts is present in complexes with a molecular mass of greater than 200 kDa, suggesting that Hsp42p exists in high molecular mass complexes.