Critical role of helix 4 of HIV-1 capsid C-terminal domain in interactions with human lysyl-tRNA synthetase

Human tRNA^Lys3 is used as the primer for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcription. HIV-1 Gag and GagPol, as well as host cell factor lysyl-tRNA synthetase (LysRS), are required for specific packaging of tRNA^Lys into virions. Gag alone is sufficient for packaging of LysRS, and these two proteins have been shown to interact in vitro with an equilibrium binding constant of ∼310 nM. The capsid (CA) domain of Gag binds to LysRS with a similar affinity as full-length Gag. In this work, we report further characterization of the interaction between HIV-1 CA and human LysRS using truncation constructs and point mutations in the putative interaction helices. Fluorescence anisotropy binding measurements reveal that a LysRS variant lacking the N-terminal 219 residues still displays high affinity binding to CA. The CA C-terminal domain (CTD) is also sufficient for binding to LysRS. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies using ¹⁵N-labeled CA-CTD reveal chemical shift perturbations of residues in and proximal to helix 4 of CA-CTD upon LysRS binding. A synthetic peptide that includes helix 4 binds to LysRS with high affinity, whereas peptides derived from the other three helical domains of CA-CTD do not. Alanine-scanning mutagenesis studies targeting residues in the helix 4 region support a direct interaction between this domain of CA-CTD and LysRS. The high resolution mapping studies reported here will facilitate future work aimed at disrupting the Gag-LysRS interaction, which represents a novel anti-viral strategy.