Functional interaction between the mouse Notch1 intracellular region and histone acetyltransferases PCAF and GCN5

The Notch receptor that plays an important role in cell fate determination is intracellularly cleaved by interaction with the ligand. The cleaved intracellular region (RAMIC) of Notch is translocated into the nucleus and interacts with a DNA-binding protein RBP-J to activate transcription of genes that regulate cell differentiation. Although RAMIC has been shown to facilitate the RBP-J-mediated transactivation by displacing the histone deacetylase corepressor complex from RBP-J, there is no evidence demonstrating the involvement of histone acetyltransferases (HATs) in the transactivation. Here we show that mouse Notch1 RAMIC interacts with two conserved HATs, mouse PCAF and GCN5, and recruits each of the HATs to RBP-J. The ankyrin repeats and the transactivation domain of RAMIC and the N-terminal regions of PCAF and GCN5, respectively, are required for the interaction. We also show that not only mouse Notch1 but also Drosophila Notch RAMIC interacts with mouse PCAF and GCN5 in mammalian cells. Furthermore, the RBP-J-mediated transactivation activity of RAMIC is repressed by two HAT inhibitor proteins, E1A and Twist. These results suggest that HATs including PCAF and GCN5 play an important role in the RBP-J-mediated transactivation by RAMIC.