Isolation of two novel cDNAs whose products associate with the amino terminus of the E2F1 transcription factor.

The amino terminus of the E2F1 transcription factor is a protein-protein interaction domain since it associates with cyclin A/cdk2. Here, the two-hybrid yeast screen was used to clone genes whose products associate with the amino terminus of E2F1. The amino-terminal 121 amino acids of E2F1 were fused to the Lex A binding domain while a partial length cDNA library from the embryo of a 12 day old mouse was fused to the VP16 activation domain. Following coexpression of these fusions in yeast, two novel genes were cloned that code for proteins that associate with E2F1. In an in vitro assay, these E2F1 Binding Proteins (EBP1 and EBP2) associate with residues 1-121 of E2F1 or with the full-length protein; however, they do not associate with its carboxy terminus (residues 88-437). When EBP1 or EBP2 were expressed in COS cells along with E2F1 and the target promoter DNA polymerase alpha, repression of transcription was observed. However, no repression of DNA polymerase alpha was seen if the cells expressed a nonassociating mutant E2F1 (residues 88-437), along with EBP1 or EBP2. Finally, expression of the EBP2 gene is up-regulated in growing NIH3T3 fibroblasts, relative to serum-starved cells. However, this up-regulation of EBP2 expression is not seen in fibroblasts constitutively expressing E2F1.