Placement of Leucine Zipper Motifs at the Carboxyl Terminus of HIV-1 Protease Significantly Reduces Virion Production

Pan, Yen-Yu; Wang, Shiu-Mei; Huang, Kuo-Jung; Chiang, Chien-Cheng; Wang, Chin-Tien

It is likely that altered conformation induced by the RT mutation significantly impacts PR dimer interaction, resulting in premature or impaired PR activation. Accordingly, structural conformations rather than specific sequences may be major determinants of the PR activation process. A protein sequence unrelated to HIV-1 but possessing dimerization capacity may therefore promote PR activation by facilitating PR dimer interaction when fused to the end of PR. To test this possibility, we removed the RT and IN sequences and placed a leucine zipper (LZ)-coding sequence at the C-terminus of PR. Results indicate that LZ placement significantly reduced virion release due to enhanced Gag cleavage, similar to observations for RT W402A mutations. These results support the hypothesis that the placement of heterologous protein dimerization sequences downstream of PR can significantly enhance Gag processing efficiency by promoting PR activation.