The apical stem-loop of the hepatitis B virus encapsidation signal folds into a stable tri-loop with two underlying pyrimidine bulges.

ABSTRACT: Reverse transcription of hepatitis B virus (HBV) pregenomic RNA is essential for virus replication. In the first step of this process, HBV reverse transcriptase binds to the highly conserved encapsidation signal, epsilon (epsilon), situated near the 5' end of the pregenome. epsilon has been predicted to form a bulged stem-loop with the apical stem capped by a hexa- loop. After the initial binding to this apical stem- loop, the reverse transcriptase synthesizes a 4 nt primer using the bulge as a template. Here we present mutational and structural data from NMR on the apical stem-loop of epsilon. Application of new isotope-labeling techniques (13C/15N/2H-U-labeling) allowed resolution of many resonance overlaps and an extensive structural data set could be derived. The NMR data show that, in

SUBMITTER: Flodell S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC135823 | biostudies-literature | 2002 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature