Background: The transcriptional activity of Nuclear hormone Receptors (NRs) is regulated by interaction with coactivator or corepressor proteins. Many of these cofactors have been shown to have a misregulated expression or to show a subcellular mislocalization in cancer cell lines or primary tumors. Therefore they can be factors involved in the process of oncogenesis.
Results: We describe a novel NR coregulator, TACC1, which belongs to the Transforming Acidic Coiled Coil (TACC) family. The interaction of TACC1 with Thyroid Hormone Receptors (TR) and several other NRs has been shown in a yeast two-hybrid screen and confirmed by GST pulldown, colocalization and co-immunoprecipitation experiments. TACC1 interacts preferentially with unliganded NRs. In F9 cells, endogenous TACC1 localized in the chromatin-enriched fraction of the nucleus and interacted with Retinoid Acid Receptors (RARalpha) in the nucleus. TACC1 depletion in the cell led to decreased RARalpha and TRalpha ligand-dependent transcriptional activity and to delocalization of TR from the nucleus to the cytoplasm.
Conclusions: From these experimental studies we propose that TACC1 might be a scaffold protein building up a transcriptional complex around the NRs we studied. This function of TACC1 might account for its involvement in several forms of tumour development.