Fluorescence monitoring of T4 polymerase holoenzyme accessory protein interactions during loading of the sliding clamp onto the template-primer junction.

Assembly of the T4 polymerase holoenzyme requires coordinated interactions among the core polymerase and the clamp loader (gp44/62) and sliding clamp (gp45) accessory proteins. Here we describe the creation of a mutant of gp45 that can be uniquely modified by fluorescent probes within each protein monomer at a site-specific cysteine residue. The fluorescently labeled gp45 was shown to have the same biological activity as the wild-type protein. These strike "labeled" gp45 adducts were then used in steady-state and fluorescence polarization studies to monitor the interaction of gp45 with the gp44/62 clamp-loading complex and template-primer DNA in the presence and absence of ATP, and of the non-hydrolyzable analog, adenosine 5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate). We find that a complex of ATP-activated gp44/62 with appropriately labeled gp45 shows significant fluorescent enhancement (and an increase in fluorescent anisotropy), that can be partially reversed by interaction with template-primer DNA. Fluorescence-monitored binding curves between gp45 and ATP-activated gp44/62 reveal that the two protein complexes bind with a 1:1 stoichiometry. Analysis shows that these methods can be used to follow the ATP-driven loading of gp45 onto the template-primer by the gp44/62 clamp-loading complex, and in combination with the kinetic data presented in the companion article, provide insight into the rate-limiting steps during clamp assembly on template-primer DNA. A reaction pathway for this processivity clamp-loading process is proposed.