Bidirectional DNA unwinding by a ternary complex of T antigen, nucleolin and topoisomerase I

The simian virus 40 large tumour-antigen (T antigen) DNA helicase is a hexameric structure; it has been proposed that, in viral DNA replication, two of these hexamers are combined to form a bipartite holoenzyme that acts concurrently at both forks of a replication bubble. In a search for structural components of this helicase complex, we have identified nucleolin as a specific binding protein for the T-antigen hexamer. We show that nucleolin, in co-operation with human topoisomerase I, mediates the cohesion of the T-antigen helicase holoenzyme during plasmid unwinding. Our results provide biochemical evidence for a direct role of nucleolin in DNA replication, in addition to its known function in ribosome biogenesis. The data presented here suggest that nucleolin enables the formation of a functional 'helicase-swivelase' complex at the replication fork.