Caenorhabditis elegans AF4/FMR2 family homolog affl-2 is required for heat shock induced gene expression

To mitigate the deleterious effects of temperature increases on cellular organization and proteotoxicity, organisms have developed mechanisms to respond to heat stress. In eukaryotes, HSF1 is the master regulator of the heat shock transcriptional response, but the heat shock response pathway is not yet fully understood. From a forward genetic screen for suppressors of heat shock induced gene expression in C. elegans, we identified a new allele of hsf-1 that alters its DNA-binding domain, and three additional alleles of sup-45, a previously uncharacterized genetic locus. We identified sup-45 as one of the two hitherto unknown C. elegans orthologs of the human AF4/FMR2 family proteins, which are involved in regulation of transcriptional elongation rate. We thus renamed sup-45 as affl-2 (AF4/FMR2-Like). affl-2 mutants are egg-laying defective and dumpy, but worms lacking its sole paralog (affl-1) appear wild-type. AFFL-2 is a broadly expressed nuclear protein, and nuclear localization of AFFL-2 is necessary for its role in heat shock response. affl-2 and its paralog are not essential for proper HSF-1 expression and localization after heat shock, which suggests that affl-2 may function downstream or parallel of hsf-1. Our characterization of affl-2 provides insights into the complex processes of transcriptional elongation and regulating heat shock induced gene expression to protect against heat stress.