T. Hai, F. Liu, W.J. Coukos, M.R. Green, "Transcription factor ATF cDNA clones: an extensive family of leucine zipper proteins able to selectively form DNA-binding heterodimers," Genes and Development, 3, 2083-90, December 1989.
Michael R. Green (University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Worcester, Mass.): "I suspect that this paper may have attracted more than the usual attention because it is relevant to several research areas, and some of the results were unexpected. We and others had been studying ATF [activating transcription factor] proteins because they play an essential role in adenovirus transcriptional regulation. Other laboratories, which focused on cellular genes, were also interested in ATF proteins, whose binding sites are present in many cellular promoters. All of the ATF proteins that we cloned contained leucine zippers, and could selectively heterodimerize, making them relevant to researchers contemplating leucine zipper interactions. Our cloning revealed a surprisingly large number of different activating transcription factor ...
