Enzyme activities in four different forms of human immunodeficiency virus 1 pol gene products.

Five cassettes of the pol gene of human immunodeficiency virus 1 were constructed and inserted under the control of the polyhedrin gene promoter of Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus by homologous recombination. The first cassette polF contains the full-length pol open reading frame; the second cassette pol100 starts with the first AUG codon of the pol gene and deletes 103 amino acids from the amino terminus of the pol gene product; the third cassette pol97 deletes the entire protease coding sequence; the fourth cassette pol66 deletes both the protease and endonuclease/integrase coding sequences; and the fifth cassette pol51 contains the reverse transcriptase coding sequences plus 39 3'-terminal nucleotides of the RNase H coding sequences. We have expressed these five forms of the pol gene in Spodoptera frugiperda SF9 cells and have analyzed for both reverse transcriptase and RNase H activities. The polF construct expressed several processed forms, 66 kDa, 51 kDa, and 34 kDa proteins, that were detected only by Western blot. In contrast, pol100, pol97, pol66, and pol51 products were expressed at high levels and were readily detectable in gels by staining. The levels of expression of these four products were estimated to be greater than 150 mg/liter of culture (5 x 10(8) cells). Activity gel analyses showed that the pol100, pol97, pol66, and pol51 products possess reverse transcriptase activity; however, only pol97 and pol66 have RNase H activity. Our results demonstrate that many forms, including partially cleaved forms of human immunodeficiency virus 1 pol gene products, possess reverse transcriptase activity but only certain forms have RNase H activity.