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Journal of Virology, April 2009, p. 3604-3616, Vol. 83, No. 8
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01778-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

RING and Coiled-Coil Domains of Baculovirus IE2 Are Critical in Strong Activation of the Cytomegalovirus Major Immediate-Early Promoter in Mammalian Cells {triangledown} ,{dagger}

Catherine Yen-Yen Liu,1 Chia-Hung Wang,1 Wen-Kai Hsiao,1 Huei-Ru Lo,1 Carol P. Wu,1 and Yu Chan Chao1,2*

Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan, Republic of China,1 Department of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan, Republic of China2

Received 22 August 2008/ Accepted 26 January 2009

In recent years, baculovirus has emerged as a tool for high-efficiency gene transfer into mammalian cells. However, the level of gene expression is often limited by the strength of the mammalian promoter used. Here, we show that the baculovirus RING protein IE2 is a strong, promiscuous trans-activator in mammalian cells, dramatically upregulating the cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter in both Vero E6 and U-2OS cells. Further study of the cellular mechanism for the activation led to the discovery of a novel IE2 nuclear body structure which contains a high concentration of G-actin and closely associates with RNA polymerase II, PML, and SUMO1. IE2 mutagenesis studies indicated that the RING and coiled-coil domains of IE2 were necessary for nuclear body formation, as well as for strong activation of the CMV promoter in mammalian cells. Overall, this study shows that the IE2 trans-activator could significantly advance the use of baculovirus in mammalian gene transfer and protein production.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan, Republic of China. Phone: 886-2-2788-2697. Fax: 886-4-2286-0164. E-mail: mbycchao{at}gate.sinica.edu.tw

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 4 February 2009.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jvi.asm.org/.

Journal of Virology, April 2009, p. 3604-3616, Vol. 83, No. 8
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01778-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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