Co-operation between protein-acetylating and protein-methylating co-activators in transcriptional activation

Nuclear hormone receptors (NRs) activate transcription by binding to specific enhancer elements associated with target genes. Transcriptional activation is accomplished with the help of complexes of co-activator proteins that bind to NRs. p160 co-activators, a family of three related 160 kDa proteins, serve as primary co-activators by binding directly to NRs and recruiting additional secondary co-activators. Some of these (CBP/p300 and p/CAF) can acetylate histones and other proteins in the transcription complex, thus helping to modify chromatin structure and form an active transcription initiation complex. We recently discovered co-activator-associated arginine methyltransferase 1 (CARM1), which binds to p160 co-activators and thereby enhances transcriptional activation by NRs on transiently transfected reporter genes. CARM1 also methylates specific arginine residues in the N-terminal tail of histone H3 in vitro. A related arginine-specific protein methyltransferase, PRMT1, also binds p160 co-activators and enhances NR function. PRMT1 methylates histone H4 in vitro. The enhancement of NR function by CARM1, PRMT1 and p300 depends on their interactions with p160 co-activators. In the presence of p160 co-activators, some pairs of these three secondary co-activators provide a highly synergistic enhancement of NR function on transiently transfected reporter genes. We have also observed an enhancement of NR function on stably integrated reporter genes by these co-activators. We propose that the synergy of co-activator function between p300, CARM1 and PRMT1 is due to their different but complementary protein modification activities.