Phosphorylation sites of the E2 transcriptional regulatory proteins of bovine papillomavirus type 1.

The E2 open reading frame of bovine papillomavirus type 1 (BPV-1) encodes three transcriptional regulatory proteins. The full-length open reading frame encodes a protein of 410 amino acids which functions as a transcriptional transactivator. Two transcriptional repressor proteins, E2-TR and E8/E2, contain the C-terminal 249 and 204 amino acids, respectively. We have expressed both the full-length E2 protein and the E2-TR repressor protein in insect cells, by using recombinant baculoviruses, and in mammalian COS-1 cells, by using a chimeric simian virus 40/BPV-1 virus. Analysis of the E2 proteins revealed that both the transactivator and repressor forms are phosphorylated predominately on serine residues at similar sites in both expression systems. By a combination of peptide mapping and site-directed mutagenesis techniques, the serine residues at positions 298 and 301 were determined to be the major phosphorylation sites of the BPV-1 E2 proteins.