The early years of retroviral protease crystal structures.

ABSTRACT: Soon after its discovery, the attempts to develop anti-AIDS therapeutics focused on the retroviral protease (PR)-an enzyme used by lentiviruses to process the precursor polypeptide into mature viral proteins. An urgent need for the three-dimensional structure of PR to guide rational drug design prompted efforts to produce milligram quantities of this enzyme. However, only minute amounts of PR were present in the HIV-1 and HIV-2 viruses, and initial attempts to express this protein in bacteria were not successful. This review describes X-ray crystallographic studies of the retroviral proteases carried out at NCI-Frederick in the late 1980s and early 1990s and puts into perspective the crucial role that the total protein chemical synthesis played in unraveling the structure, mechanism of act

SUBMITTER: Miller M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2938048 | biostudies-literature | 2010

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature