Chromosomal ARS and CEN elements bind specifically to the yeast nuclear scaffold.

We describe here for the first time the isolation of a yeast nuclear scaffold that maintains specific interactions with yeast genomic DNA sequences. The scaffold-DNA interaction is reversible and saturable, and some binding sites are conserved between yeast and Drosophila KC cells. Second, we find that the specific sequences bound to the yeast nuclear scaffold are the putative origins of replication (ARS elements) and a chromosomal centromere, CENIII. The scaffold association has been closely mapped at the ARS1 locus, and appears to include the 11 bp ARS consensus, but not the ABF-1 binding site. Competition studies show that ARS1 does not compete for CENIII binding, allowing us to distinguish two classes of scaffold attachment sites by functional and structural criteria.