GENETIC-ANALYSIS OF HOMOMERIC INTERACTIONS OF HUMAN-IMMUNODEFICIENCY-VIRUS TYPE-1 INTEGRASE USING THE YEAST 2-HYBRID SYSTEM

The retroviral integrase protein (IN) is responsible for catalyzing a concerted integration reaction in which the two termini of linear vira l DNA are joined to host DNA. To probe the potential for IN to form pr otein multimers, we used the yeast two-hybrid system. The coexpression of a GAL4 DNA binding domain-IN fusion and a GAL4 activation domain-I N fusion together resulted in the successful activation of a GAL4-resp onsive LacZ reporter gene. The system was used to examine a variety of IN deletion mutants. The results suggest that the central region of t he protein is necessary for multimerization and that the N-terminal zi nc finger region is not important.