Dissecting glucose signalling with diversity-oriented synthesis and small-molecule microarrays

Finny G. Kuruvilla, Alykhan F. Shamji, Scott M. Sternson, Paul J. Hergenrother, Stuart L. Schreiber

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Small molecules that alter protein function provide a means to modulate biological networks with temporal resolution. Here we demonstrate a potentially general and scalable method of identifying such molecules by application to a particular protein, Ure2p, which represses the transcription factors Gln3p and Nil1p. By probing a high-density microarray of small molecules generated by diversity-oriented synthesis with fluorescently labelled Ure2p, we performed 3, 780 protein-binding assays in parallel and identified several compounds that bind Ure2p. One compound, which we call uretupamine, specifically activates a glucose-sensitive transcriptional pathway downstream of Ure2p. Whole-genome transcription profiling and chemical epistasis demonstrate the remarkable Ure2p specificity of uretupamine and its ability to modulate the glucose-sensitive subset of genes downstream of Ure2p. These results demonstrate that diversity-oriented synthesis and small-molecule microarrays can be used to identify small molecules that bind to a protein of interest, and that these small molecules can regulate specific functions of the protein.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)653-657
Number of pages5
JournalNature
Volume416
Issue number6881
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 11 2002

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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