Investigating the “Steric Gate” of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) Reverse Transcriptase by Targeted Insertion of Unnatural Amino Acids
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To investigate how structural changes in the amino acid side chain affect nucleotide substrate selection in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase (RT), a variety of non-natural tyrosine analogues were substituted for Tyr115 of p66 RT. RT variants containing meta-Tyr, nor-Tyr, aminomethyl-Phe, and 1- and 2-naphthyl-Tyr were produced in an Escherichia coli coupled transcription/translation system. Mutant p66 subunits were reconstituted with wild-type (WT) p51 RT and purified by affinity chromatography. Each modified enzyme retained DNA polymerase activity following this procedure. Aminomethyl-Phe115 RT incorporated dCTP more efficiently than the WT and was resistant to the chain terminator (-)-beta-2',3'-dideoxy-3'-thiacytidine triphosphate (3TCTP) when examined in a steady-state fidelity assay. However, 2-naphthyl-Tyr115 RT inefficiently incorporated dCTP at low concentrations and was kinetically slower with all dCTP analogues tested. Models of RT containing these side chains suggest that the aminomethyl-Phe115 substitution provides new hydrogen bonds through the minor groove to the incoming dNTP and the template residue of the terminal base pair. These hydrogen bonds likely contribute to the increased efficiency of dCTP incorporation. In contrast, models of HIV-1 RT containing 2-naphthyl-Tyr115 reveal significant steric clashes with Pro157 of the p66 palm subdomain, necessitating rearrangement of the active site.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".