Eukaryotic promoters generally contain nucleosome depleted regions near their 
transcription start sites. In the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae, these 
regions are adjacent to binding sites for general regulatory transcription 
factors, and the Reb1 protein is commonly bound to promoter DNA near such 
regions. The yeast TFC6 promoter is a unique RNA polymerase II promoter in that 
it is autoregulated by its own gene product Tfc6p, which is part of the RNA 
polymerase III transcription factor complex TFIIIC. We previously demonstrated 
that mutation of a potential Reb1 binding site adjacent to the TFIIIC binding 
site in the TFC6 promoter modestly reduces transcript levels, but leads to a 
severe decrease in Tfc6 protein levels due to an upstream shift in the TFC6 
transcription start site. Here we confirm that Reb1p indeed binds to the TFC6 
promoter, and is important for proper transcription start site selection and 
protein expression. Interestingly, loss of Reb1p association at this site has a 
similar effect on the adjacent divergently transcribed ESC2 promoter, resulting 
in a significant increase of 5'-extended ESC2 transcripts and reduction of Esc2 
protein levels. This altered divergent transcription may be the result of 
changes in nucleosome positioning at this locus in the absence of Reb1p binding. 
We speculate that an important function of general regulatory factors such as 
Reb1p is to establish and maintain proper transcription start sites at 
promoters, and that when binding of such factors is compromised, resulting 
effects on mRNA translation may be an underappreciated aspect of gene regulation 
studies.