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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 280, Issue 47, 39086-39094, November 25, 2005

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The Integrase of the Long Terminal Repeat-Retrotransposon Tf1 Has a Chromodomain That Modulates Integrase Activities^*

From the Section on Eukaryotic Transposable Elements, Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Development, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

Chromodomains in a variety of proteins mediate the formation of heterochromatin by interacting directly with histone H3, DNA, or RNA. A diverse family of long terminal repeat (LTR)-retrotransposons possesses chromodomains in their integrases (IN), suggesting that the chromodomains may control integration. The LTR-retrotransposon Tf1 of Schizosaccharomyces pombe is highly active and possesses a chromodomain in the COOH terminus of its IN. To test this chromodomain for a role in integration, recombinant INs with and without the chromodomain were assayed for activity in in vitro reactions. The full-length IN had integration activity with oligonucleotide substrates that modeled both the insertion reaction and a reverse reaction known as disintegration. The INs of retroviruses possess an additional activity termed 3' processing that must remove 2-3 nucleotides from the 3' ends of the viral cDNA before insertion can occur. These additional nucleotides are added during reverse transcription because of the position of the minus strand primer downstream of the LTR. The position of the primer for Tf1 suggests no nucleotides are added 3' of the LTR. It was therefore surprising that Tf1 IN was capable of 3' cleavage. The most unexpected result reported here was that the IN lacking the chromodomain had significantly higher activity and substantially reduced substrate specificity. These results reveal that both the activity and specificity of enzymes can be modulated by their chromodomains.

Received for publication, June 10, 2005 , and in revised form, August 11, 2005.

We dedicate this article to the memory of our colleague and good friend, Dr. Kiebang Nam.

^* This work was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, NICHD, and the National Institutes of Health Intramural AIDS Targeted Antiviral Program. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains additional supplemental text.

¹ Recipient of an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education fellowship administered by Oak Ridge Laboratories. Permanent address: Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Israel. Incumbent of The Gregorio and Dora Shapira Chair for the Research of Malignancies at Tel Aviv University. E-mail: ahizy{at}post.tau.ac.il.

² To whom correspondence should be addressed: 18 Library Dr., Rm. 106, Bethesda, MD 20892. Tel.: 301-402-4281; Fax: 301-402-1323: E-mail: henry_levin{at}nih.gov.

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