Ets1, when fused to the GAL4 DNA binding domain, efficiently enhances galactose promotor dependent gene expression in yeast

Ets1, the translation product of the c-ets1 proto-oncogene and the related Ets2 protein, act as sequence-specific transcriptional factors in transient transfection experiments in animal cells. We report here that in S. cerevisiae, expression of a lacZ test gene placed under the control of the GAL1 promoter is stimulated efficiently by a fusion protein in which the chicken Ets1 sequence starting from amino acid 37, is linked to the DNA binding domain of the yeast GAL4 transcriptional activator. This suggests that Ets1 contains one or more intrinsic transcription activation domain(s). However, the GAL4 integral of Ets1 fusion protein was unable to restore growth of a gal4 deletion mutant on galactose, implying that the fusion product cannot substitute for GAL4 enhancement on all GAL genes.