MS3D structural elucidation of the HIV-1 packaging signal.

ABSTRACT: The structure of HIV-1 Psi-RNA has been elucidated by a concerted approach combining structural probes with mass spectrometric detection (MS3D), which is not affected by the size and crystallization properties of target biomolecules. Distance constraints from bifunctional cross-linkers provided the information required for assembling an all-atom model from the high-resolution coordinates of separate domains by triangulating their reciprocal placement in 3D space. The resulting structure revealed a compact cloverleaf morphology stabilized by a long-range tertiary interaction between the GNRA tetraloop of stemloop 4 (SL4) and the upper stem of stemloop 1 (SL1). The preservation of discrete stemloop structures ruled out the possibility that major rearrangements might produce a putative supers

SUBMITTER: Yu ET 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2527897 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature