2. Academic Validation
  3. Novel RNase H Inhibitors Blocking RNA-directed Strand Displacement DNA Synthesis by HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase

Novel RNase H Inhibitors Blocking RNA-directed Strand Displacement DNA Synthesis by HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase

  • J Mol Biol. 2022 Apr 15;434(7):167507. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2022.167507.
Samara Martín-Alonso 1,  Dongwei Kang 2,  Javier Martínez Del Río 1,  Joanna Luczkowiak 1,  Estrella Frutos-Beltrán 1,  Lina Zhang 2,  Xiqiang Cheng 2,  Xinyong Liu 3,  Peng Zhan 4,  Luis Menéndez-Arias 5
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Centro de Biología Molecular "Severo Ochoa" (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), c/ Nicolás Cabrera 1, Campus de Cantoblanco-UAM, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
  • 2 Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Ministry of Education, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250012, PR China.
  • 3 Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Ministry of Education, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250012, PR China. Electronic address: xinyongl@sdu.edu.cn.
  • 4 Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Ministry of Education, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250012, PR China. Electronic address: zhanpeng1982@sdu.edu.cn.
  • 5 Centro de Biología Molecular "Severo Ochoa" (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), c/ Nicolás Cabrera 1, Campus de Cantoblanco-UAM, 28049 Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: lmenendez@cbm.csic.es.
PMID: 35217069 DOI: 10.1016/j.jmb.2022.167507
Abstract

In retroviruses, strand displacement DNA-dependent DNA polymerization catalyzed by the viral Reverse Transcriptase (RT) is required to synthesize double-stranded proviral DNA. In addition, strand displacement during RNA-dependent DNA synthesis is critical to generate high-quality cDNA for use in Molecular Biology and biotechnology. In this work, we show that the loss of RNase H activity due to inactivating mutations in HIV-1 RT (e.g. D443N or E478Q) has no significant effect on strand displacement while copying DNA templates, but has a large impact on DNA polymerization in reactions carried out with RNA templates. Similar effects were observed with β-thujaplicinol and Other RNase H active site inhibitors, including compounds with dual activity (i.e., characterized also as inhibitors of HIV-1 integrase and/or the RT DNA Polymerase). Among them, dual inhibitors of HIV-1 RT DNA Polymerase/RNase H activities, containing a 7-hydroxy-6-nitro-2H-chromen-2-one pharmacophore were found to be very potent and effective strand displacement inhibitors in RNA-dependent DNA polymerization reactions. These findings might be helpful in the development of transcriptomics technologies to obtain more uniform read coverages when copying long RNAs and for the construction of more representative libraries avoiding biases towards 5' and 3' ends, while providing valuable information for the development of novel antiretroviral agents.

Keywords

HIV; RNase H; RNase H inhibitors; reverse transcriptase; strand displacement.

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