Fig. 1. Zta and K-bZIP domains and sequence characteristics. (A) Schematic diagram of the domain structure of Zta. The large black oval represents the transactivation domain located at the N terminus. The DNA contact region (blue) and the leucine zipper region (red) are shown as rectangles. A region of unknown structure at the N terminus is shown as a small black oval. The two strands of DNA that contact the basic region are represented as green lines. (B) The 3D structure of GCN4 basic and leucine zipper regions in contact with DNA is shown. The crystal data for the entire bZIP region (PDB: 1YSA) were viewed using SWISS PROT (http://ca.expasy.org/sprot). The protein backbone of each molecule is colour coded as in (A). (C) The protein sequences of Zta (P03206) and K-bZIP (O92597) were aligned using CLUSTALW (Thompson et al., 1994). Asterisks represent sequence identity, colons, conservation of features such as hydrophobicity or a charged side-chain and full stops, semi-conservation of sequence. A search of each protein for conserved motifs (PROSITE) (Falquet et al., 2002) revealed a basic domain found in bZIP proteins in Zta only (highlighted in blue). Analysis of the propensity of each protein to fold as a coiled-coil (COILS) (Lupas et al., 1991) revealed a region of similar length and location in each (highlighted in red).

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