A new group of conserved coactivators that increase the specificity of AP-1 transcription factors

THE Jun proteins are nuclear proteins that combine with Fos proteins to form a gene-regulatory protein, AP-1. They have highly conserved DNA-binding and dimerization domains, resulting in almost identical sequence-recognition properties(1-3). Nevertheless, there are many indications that each Jun protein activates a distinct and only partially overlapping set of AP-1 target genes(4-6). Using the more variable activation domain of c-Jun as a bait, we identified a protein, JAB1, that interacts with c-Jun and JunD, but not with JunB or v-Jun. As a result, JAB1 selectively potentiates transactivation by only c-Jun or JunD, In vitro, JAB1 specifically stabilizes complexes of c-Jun or JunD with AP-1 sites and does not affect binding of either JunB or v-Jun. The amino-terminal half of JAB1 is very similar to the amino terminal region of Pad1 from fission yeast, which was identified genetically as a coactivator of a subset of AP-1 target genes(7). JAB1 and Pad1 are also functionally interchangeable. They define a new group of coactivators that increase the specificity of target gene activation by AP-1 proteins.