An arginine to lysine substitution in the bZIP domain of an opaque-2 mutant in maize abolishes specific DNA binding.

The opaque-2 (o2) locus in maize encodes a transcription factor involved in the regulation of zein storage proteins. We have shown previously that the O2 protein contains a leucine zipper domain that binds to promoters of 22-kD zein genes. In this paper we characterize an EMS-induced o2 allele, o2-676, that causes a 50% reduction in zein. We have found that the o2-676 mutant protein does not show specific recognition of zein promoter fragments because of the substitution of a lysine residue for an arginine residue within the bZIP domain of o2-676. This particular arginine is conserved within the bZIP domains of all mammalian, fungal, and plant DNA binding proteins of this class. The correlation between this mutation in o2 and the altered pattern of zein expression strongly suggests that O2 regulates transcription of certain members of the zein multigene family through direct interaction with the zein promoters and not through the transcriptional activation of some other regulator of zein gene expression.