Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
J. Virol., 09 1995, 5431-5436, Vol 69, No. 9
B Maschera, E Furfine and ED Blair
There are already reports, from clinical trials with human immunodeficiency
virus type 1 protease inhibitors, of the emergence of drug-resistant
mutants which have one or more point mutations in their protease genes. To
examine roles of individual and multiple amino acid substitutions in terms
of altered enzyme and virus drug sensitivities, we have produced matched
vectors for bacterial expression and virus production. Both vectors accept
the same restriction enzyme fragment, produced by PCR or PCR-mutagenesis of
the protease gene, allowing parallel expression of mutant enzymes in
Escherichia coli and in recombinant viruses. The utility of this vector
system was demonstrated by using protease variants glycine to valine at
amino acid 48 (G48V) and leucine to methionine at amino acid 90 (L90M)
identified after passage of HIV-1 in the Roche phase II clinical trial
protease inhibitor Ro 31-8959 (H. Jacobsen, K. Yasargil, D. L. Winslow, J.
C. Craig, A. Krohn, I. B. Duncan, and J. Mous, Virology 206:527, 1995).
G48V, L90M, and G48V/L90M exhibited successively less processing in vitro
than the wild-type enzyme, and the purified enzymes were 220-, 20- , and
720-fold, respectively, less sensitive to Ro 31-8959. The reduced enzyme
sensitivity correlated directly with the sensitivities of the matched
recombinant viruses, in that individual mutations L90M and G48V conferred
2-fold and 4- to 6-fold increases in 50% inhibitory concentration,
respectively, whereas G48V/L90M was 8 to 10 times less sensitive to Ro
31-8959. A proviral vector with the entire protease gene deleted was
constructed for use as an in vivo recombination target for an overlapping
protease PCR fragment, generating wild-type infectious virus. Finally,
direct ligation of restriction fragments, generated from random PCR
mutagenesis, into the proviral vector should provide a library of protease
mutations that allow extremely rapid selection of highly resistant viral
variants.
Copyright © 1995, American Society for Microbiology
Analysis of resistance to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 protease inhibitors by using matched bacterial expression and proviral infection vectors
Gene Targets Group, Wellcome Research Laboratories, Beckenham, United Kingdom.
This article has been cited by other articles:
| J. Bacteriol. | Mol. Cell. Biol. | Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. |
|---|
| Clin. Vaccine Immunol. | ALL ASM JOURNALS |
|---|