Regulation of CAK activity of Cdk7 in Drosophila melanogaster

• Main Author: Chen, Jian, 1969-
• Other Authors: Suter, Beat (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2003
• Subjects: Cyclin-dependent kinases.; Cell cycle.; DNA helicases.; Drosophila melanogaster > Cytogenetics.; Drosophila melanogaster > Molecular genetics.
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=82842

Cdk7 (Cyclin-dependent kinase 7) is conserved from yeast to human and involved in multiple functions. Cdk7 acts as a CAK (Cdk activating kinase) in a trimeric complex with Cyclin H and Mat1. The CAK activity is required for the full activation of the Cdks that directly regulate the cell cycle transitions. In addition, Cdk7 is the kinase subunit of TFIIH, the general transcription/DNA repair factor IIH. TFIIH is required for the general transcription of messenger RNAs by RNA polymerase II and for the transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair functions. As in other systems, Drosophila Cdk7 has multiple functions. In order to understand how different functions of Cdk7 are regulated, I performed genetic screens to identify the regulators or downstream factors of multiple functions of Cdk7. Several candidate dominant suppressors and enhancers were identified in these screens. One strong suppressor of cdk7, xpd, encodes another subunit of TFIIH. The genetic suppression by xpd attracted me to further characterize the biological significance of this interaction. I showed that Xpd does have a novel function in regulating CAK activity of cdk7 , it down-regulates mitotic CAK activity. Furthermore, I found that Xpd protein levels are cell cycle dependent, being down-regulated at the beginning of the mitosis. Based on these data, I propose a model that mitotic down-regulation of Xpd results in increased CAK activity, positively regulating mitotic progression. Simultaneously, this down-regulation can be expected to contribute to the mechanisms of mitotic silencing of basal transcription.