Fig. 1.

Effect of polyamide-DNA binding on the 2 major modes of gene regulation demonstrated by the GR. (Top) Direct mechanism is dependent on GR-DNA binding at the GRE. (Bottom) Indirect mechanism is dependent on GR binding to another protein, indicated here as a general transcription factor (TF) [with binding site TF response element (TFRE)]. A sequence-specific polyamide designed to bind to the GRE but not to the TFRE would alter gene expression controlled by the DNA-binding dependent mechanism but not by the DNA-binding independent mechanism.