Expression of Murine Coronavirus Recombinant Papain-Like Proteinase: Efficient Cleavage Is Dependent on the Lengths of both the Substrate and the Proteinase Polypeptides

Proteolytic processing of the replicase gene product of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) is essential for viral replication. In MHV strain A59 (MHV-A59), the replicase gene encodes two predicted papain-like proteinase (PLP) domains, PLP-1 and PLP-2. Previous work using viral polypeptide substrates synthesized by in vitro transcription and translation from the replicase gene demonstrated both cis and trans cleavage activities for PLP-1. We have cloned and overexpressed the PLP-1 domain in Escherichia coli by using a T7 RNA polymerase promoter system or as a maltose-binding protein (MBP) fusion protein. With both overexpression systems, the recombinant PLP-1 exhibited trans cleavage activity when incubated with in vitro-synthesized viral polypeptide substrates. Subsequent characterization of the recombinant PLP-1 revealed that in vitro trans cleavage is more efficient at 22°C than at higher temperatures. Using substrates of increasing lengths, we observed efficient cleavage by PLP-1 requires a substrate greater than 69 kDa. In addition, when PLP-1 was expressed as a polypeptide that included additional viral sequences at the carboxyl terminus of the predicted PLP-1 domain, a fivefold increase in proteolytic activity was observed. The data presented here support previous data suggesting that in vitro and in vivo cleavage of the ORF 1a polyprotein by PLP-1 can occur in both in cis and in trans. In contrast to the cleavage activity demonstrated for PLP-1, no in vitro cleavage in cis or in trans could be detected with PLP-2 expressed either as a polypeptide, including flanking viral sequences, or as an MBP fusion enzyme.