Roles of nonstructural polyproteins and cleavage products in regulating Sindbis virus RNA replication and transcription.

Using vaccinia virus to express Sindbis virus (SIN) nonstructural proteins (nsPs) and template RNAs, we showed previously that synthesis of all three viral RNAs occurred only during expression of either the entire nonstructural coding region or the polyprotein precursors P123 and P34. In this report, the vaccinia virus system was used to express cleavage-defective polyproteins and nsP4 proteins containing various N-terminal extensions to directly examine the roles of the P123 and P34 polyproteins in RNA replication. Replication and subgenomic mRNA transcription occurred during coexpression of P34 and P123 polyproteins in which cleavage was blocked at either or both of the 1/2 and 2/3 sites. For all cleavage-defective P123 polyproteins, however, the ratio of subgenomic to genomic RNA was decreased, suggesting that both the 1/2 and 2/3 cleavages are required for efficient subgenomic RNA transcription. These studies indicate that the uncleaved P123 polyprotein can function as a component of the viral replicase capable of synthesizing both plus- and minus-strand RNAs. In contrast, cleavage-defective P34 was unable to function in RNA replication, even in complementation experiments in which minus-strand RNAs were provided by nsP4. A P34 polyprotein whose cleavage site was not altered could only function in RNA replication in the presence of an active nsP2 protease. Although nsP4, the putative RNA polymerase, was capable of synthesizing only minus-strand RNAs during coexpression with P123, the addition of only 22 upstream residues to nsP4 allowed both replication and transcription of subgenomic RNA to occur. These data show that the conserved domains of both nsP3 and the nsP4 polymerase do not need to be present in a P34 polyprotein to form a functional plus-strand replicase-transcriptase and suggest that the presence of an active nsP2 protease and a cleavable 3/4 site correlates with synthesis of all virus-specific RNA species.