Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 and type 2 protease monomers are functionally interchangeable in the dimeric enzymes. |
| |
Authors: | C E Patterson R Seetharam C A Kettner and Y S Cheng |
| |
Institution: | DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company, Wilmington, Delaware 19880-0328. |
| |
Abstract: | Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and HIV-2 proteases are dimers of identical subunits. We made a construct for the expression of recombinant one-chain HIV-2 protease dimer, which, like the previously described one-chain HIV-1 protease dimer, is fully active. The constructs for the one-chain dimers of HIV-1 and HIV-2 proteases were modified to produce hybrid one-chain dimers consisting of both HIV-1 and HIV-2 protease monomers. Although the monomers share only 47.5% sequence identity, the hybrid one-chain dimers are fully active, suggesting that the folding of both HIV-1 and HIV-2 protease monomers is functionally similar. |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|