Abstract
The specific binding of one or several Saccharomyces cerevisiae proteins to a segment of genes that code for different yeast tRNAs has been demonstrated with the use of the DNase I-protection "footprint" assay of Galas and Schmitz. The analyzed binding occurs near the 3' ends of the genes and is centered on an 11-base-pair DNA sequence that has been well conserved among eukaryotic tRNA genes. Others have shown the involvement of this sequence in initiating the transcription of tRNA genes by RNA polymerase III. The adenovirus gene that codes for VAI RNA also contains this conserved sequence element, and we detect binding of yeast protein(s) to this gene. Competition experiments show that a common set of proteins binds to different tRNA genes. The DNA-protein complex is quite stable at 20 degrees C and low ionic strength.