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PLoS By Category | Recent
PLoS Articles
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Biochemistry - Infectious Diseases - Urology
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Placement of Leucine Zipper Motifs at the Carboxyl Terminus of HIV-1 Protease Significantly Reduces Virion Production
Published:
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Author:
Yen-Yu Pan et al.
by Yen-Yu Pan, Shiu-Mei Wang, Kuo-Jung Huang, Chien-Cheng Chiang, Chin-Tien Wang
Natural HIV-1 protease (PR) is homodimeric. Some researchers believe that interactions between HIV-1 Gag-Pol molecules trigger the activation of embedded PR (which mediates Gag and Gag-Pol cleavage), and that Gag-Pol assembly domains outside of PR may contribute to PR activation by influencing PR dimer interaction in a Gag-Pol context. To determine if the enhancement of PR dimer interaction facilitates PR activation, we placed single or tandem repeat leucine zippers (LZ) at the PR C-terminus, and looked for a correlation between enhanced Gag processing efficiency and increased Gag-PR-LZ multimerization capacity. We found significant reductions in virus-like particles (VLPs) produced by HIV-1 mutants, with LZ fused to the end of PR as a result of enhanced Gag cleavage efficiency. Since VLP production can be restored to wt levels following PR activity inhibition, this assembly defect is considered PR activity-dependent. We also found a correlation between the LZ enhancement effect on Gag cleavage and enhanced Gag-PR multimerization. The results suggest that PR dimer interactions facilitated by forced Gag-PR multimerization lead to premature Gag cleavage, likely a result of premature PR activation. Our conclusion is that placement of a heterologous dimerization domain downstream of PR enhances PR-mediated Gag cleavage efficiency, implying that structural conformation, rather than the primary sequence outside of PR, is a major determinant of HIV-1 PR activation.
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