Patterson C E, Seetharam R, Kettner C A, Cheng Y S
DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company, Wilmington, Delaware 19880-0328.
J Virol. 1992 Feb;66(2):1228-31. doi: 10.1128/JVI.66.2.1228-1231.1992.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and HIV-2 proteases are dimers of identical subunits. We made a construct for the expression of recombinant one-chain HIV-2 protease dimer, which, like the previously described one-chain HIV-1 protease dimer, is fully active. The constructs for the one-chain dimers of HIV-1 and HIV-2 proteases were modified to produce hybrid one-chain dimers consisting of both HIV-1 and HIV-2 protease monomers. Although the monomers share only 47.5% sequence identity, the hybrid one-chain dimers are fully active, suggesting that the folding of both HIV-1 and HIV-2 protease monomers is functionally similar.