Figure 1.

Structure-based design of TBP/ZF. The cocrystal structures of the Zif268:DNA (14) and the TBP:TATA box complexes (9) were aligned by superimposing phosphates in several different registers. In the model shown above, the NH₂-terminal end of Zif268 was 23 Å away from the COOH-terminal end of TBP. We created the TBP/ZF fusion protein by adding a NH₂-(Gly-Gly-Gly-Ser)₂Gly-COOH polypeptide linker to join the two molecules. The alignment of binding sites used in this modeling study suggested that TBP/ZF would bind tightly to the sequence 5′-GCGTGGGCGNNNNTATATAAA-3′.