Expression of moloney murine leukemia virus reverse transcriptase in a cell-free protein expression system.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize Moloney murine leukemia virus (MMLV) reverse transcriptases (RTs) expressed in a cell-free system and in Escherichia coli. RESULTS: We previously expressed MMLV RT using an E. coli expression system and generated a highly thermostable quadruple variant MM4 (E286R/E302K/L435R/D524A) by site-directed mutagenesis. In this study, we expressed the wild-type MMLV RT (WT) and MM4 using a cell-free protein expression system from insect cells. WT exhibited DNA polymerase and RNase H activities, while MM4, in which the catalytic residue for RNase H activity, Asp524 is changed into Ala, exhibited only DNA polymerase activity. MM4, when held at 60 °C for 10 min, retained DNA polymerase activity, while WT, held at 54 °C for 10 min, lost this activity. In the cDNA synthesis reaction (0.5 µl) in which WT or MM4 were exposed to various temperatures and amounts of target RNA in a microarray chip, MM4 exhibited higher thermostability than WT. CONCLUSION: MMLV RT expressed in the cell-free system is indistinguishable from that expressed in E. coli.

Preparation and characterization of the RNase H domain of Moloney murine leukemia virus reverse transcriptase.

Moloney murine leukemia virus reverse transcriptase (MMLV RT) contains fingers, palm, thumb, and connection subdomains as well as an RNase H domain. The DNA polymerase active site resides in the palm subdomain, and the RNase H active site is located in the RNase H domain. The RNase H domain contains a positively charged α-helix called the C helix (H(594)GEIYRRR(601)), that is thought to be involved in substrate recognition. In this study, we expressed three versions of the RNase H domain in Escherichia coli, the wild-type domain (WT) (residues Ile498-Leu671) and two variants that lack the regions containing the C helix (Ile593-Leu603 and Gly595-Thr605, which we called ΔC1 and ΔC2, respectively) with a strep-tag at the N-terminus and a deca-histidine tag at the C-terminus. These peptides were purified from the cells by anion-exchange, Ni(2+) affinity, and Strep-Tactin affinity column chromatography, and then the tags were removed by proteolysis. In an RNase H assay using a 25-bp RNA-DNA heteroduplex, WT, ΔC1, and ΔC2 produced RNA fragments ranging from 7 to 16 nucleotides (nt) whereas the full-length MMLV RT (Thr24-Leu671) produced 14-20-nt RNA fragments, suggesting that elimination of the fingers, palm, thumb, and connection subdomains affects the binding of the RNase H domain to the RNA-DNA heteroduplex. The activity levels of WT, ΔC1, and ΔC2 were estimated to be 1%, 0.01%, and 0.01% of full-length MMLV RT activity, indicating that the C helix is important, but not critical, for the activity of the isolated RNase H domain.