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Journal of Virology, August 2001, p. 6850-6856, Vol. 75, No. 15
0022-538X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.75.15.6850-6856.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Second-Site Suppressors of Rous Sarcoma Virus CA
Mutations: Evidence for Interdomain Interactions
J. Bradford
Bowzard,
John
W.
Wills, and
Rebecca C.
Craven*
Department of Microbiology and Immunology,
The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, M. S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033
Received 11 December 2000/Accepted 28 April 2001
The capsid (CA) protein, the major structural component of
retroviruses, forms a shell that encases the ribonucleoprotein complex
in the virion core. The most conserved region of CA, ~20 amino acids
of the major homology region (MHR), lies within the carboxy-terminal
domain of the protein. Structural and sequence similarities among CA
proteins of retroviruses and the CA-like proteins of hepatitis B virus
and various retrotransposons suggest that the MHR is involved in an
aspect of replication common to these reverse-transcribing elements.
Conservative substitutions in this region of the Rous sarcoma virus
protein were lethal due to a severe deficiency in reverse
transcription, in spite of the presence of an intact genome and active
reverse transcriptase in the particles. This finding suggests that the
mutations interfered with normal interactions among these constituents.
A total of four genetic suppressors of three lethal MHR mutations have
now been identified. All four map to the sequence encoding the
CA-spacer peptide (SP) region of Gag. The F167Y mutation in the MHR was fully suppressed by a single amino acid change in the alpha helix immediately downstream of the MHR, a region that forms the major dimer
interface in human immunodeficiency virus CA. This finding suggests
that the F167Y mutation indirectly interfered with dimerization. The
F167Y defect could also be repaired by a second, independent suppressor
in the C-terminal SP that was removed from CA during maturation. This
single residue change, which increased the rate of SP cleavage,
apparently corrected the F167Y defect by modifying the maturation
pathway. More surprising was the isolation of suppressors of the R170Q
and L171V MHR mutations, which mapped to the N-terminal domain of the
CA protein. This finding suggests that the two domains, which in the
monomeric protein are separated by a flexible linker, must communicate
with each other at some unidentified point in the viral replication cycle.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology and Immunology, The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, 500 University Dr., P.O. Box 850, Hershey, PA 17033. Phone: (717) 531-3528. Fax: (717) 531-6522. E-mail:
rcraven{at}psu.edu.

Present address: Emory University, Department of
Biochemistry, Atlanta, GA
30322.
Journal of Virology, August 2001, p. 6850-6856, Vol. 75, No. 15
0022-538X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.75.15.6850-6856.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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