Alternative nucleophilic substrates for the endonuclease activities of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 integrase.

Retroviral integrase can use water or some small alcohols as the attacking nucleophile to nick DNA. To characterize the range of compounds that human immunodeficiency virus type 1 integrase can accommodate for its endonuclease activities, we tested 45 potential electron donors (having varied size and number or spacing of nucleophilic groups) as substrates during site-specific nicking at viral DNA ends and during nonspecific nicking reactions. We found that integrase used 22 of the 45 compounds to nick DNA, but not all active compounds were used for both activities. In particular, 13 compounds were used for site-specific and nonspecific nicking, 5 only for site-specific nicking, and 4 only for nonspecific nicking; 23 other compounds were not used for either activity. Thus, integrase can accommodate a large number of nucleophilic substrates but has selective requirements for its different activities, underscoring its dynamic properties and providing new information for modeling and understanding integrase.