Binding properties of bovine ocular lens zeta-crystallin to right-handed B-DNA, left-handed Z-DNA, and single-stranded DNA.

Bovine zeta-crystallin has the ability to bind with different DNAs. Initially, this protein was named regulatory factor 36 (Kang et al., 1985), but it has been shown to be an ocular lens zeta-crystallin (Jörnvall et al., 1993), which is considered an enzyme-crystallin (Rodakanaki et al., 1989). The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to quantitate the binding of bovine zeta-crystallin to purified high molecular weight double-stranded (ds-) and single-stranded (ss-) DNA (bovine and synthetic DNA). ELISA quantitation was achieved by the addition of anti-zeta-crystallin antibodies to the DNA-zeta-crystallin complex, using a novel immunochemical avidin-biotin method. Zeta-crystallin shows much greater binding intensity for ss-DNA and for ds-Z-DNA than for ds-B-DNA. It also reacts slightly more with ds-Z-DNA than ss-DNA. Therefore, we speculate that zeta-crystallin may act as a transcriptional enhancer (outer lens cortex), possibly binding to Z-DNA regulatory elements within lens crystallin genes. It may also act to protect DNA from endogenous DNase activity and as a DNA unwinding (destabilizing) protein also involved with transcription, occurring in normal adult bovine lens nucleated secondary fiber cells.