Poster abstracts
Poster number 75 submitted by Jonathan Kitzrow
Regulation of HIV-1 genomic RNA 5’-UTR conformation
Jonathan Kitzrow (Chemistry and Biochemistry, The Ohio State University ), Erik Olson (Chemistry and Biochemistry, The Ohio State University ), Karin Musier-Forsyth (Chemistry and Biochemistry, The Ohio State University )
Abstract:
HIV-1 packages its genetic material into assembling virions as a dimer of full-length genomic RNA (gRNA). HIV-1 gRNA packaging is facilitated through interactions between the nucleocapsid (NC) domain of the HIV-1 Gag protein and specific structural elements in the 5’-untranslated region (5’UTR) of gRNA. Full-length HIV-1 gRNA also serves as the template for Gag/Gag-Pol polyprotein translation. A conformational change in the 5’UTR has previously been proposed to govern a switch from translation competent to packaging competent gRNA. NMR studies have shown that the U5 region of the 5’UTR can interact with both the dimer initiation signal (DIS) and Gag start codon (AUG). These interactions selectively expose either the DIS (packaging competent form) or AUG (translation competent form) elements in a mutually exclusive manner. In this work, a Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based assay has been designed to probe the HIV-1 5’UTR conformation in both the monomeric and dimeric state. We hypothesize that Gag, NC, and/or tRNALys3 primer binding may shift the 5’UTR conformational equilibrium and this will also be tested.
Keywords: HIV-1, gRNA, FRET