Cloning, sequencing, and expression of two murine 2'-5'-oligoadenylate synthetases. Structure-function relationships

2'-5'-oligoadenylate synthetases constitute a multimember family of interferon-inducible enzymes which need double-stranded RNA as an obligatory cofactor. We have isolated cDNA clones for two new murine synthetases. These two clones, 9-2 and 3-9, encoded proteins of 414 and 363 amino acid residues, respectively, out of which the amino terminal 346 residues were almost identical. They were also very similar to the corresponding regions of human synthetases E16 and E18. On the other hand, the carboxyl-terminal 68 residues of clone 9-2 had no homology with the carboxyl-terminal residues of E18. These murine clones had only 67% amino acid identity with the previously isolated murine synthetase clone L3. 9-2 and 3-9 proteins were expressed efficiently by in vitro transcription and translation of cDNA clones containing the synthetase coding regions preceded by the 5'-untranslated region of the vesicular stomatitis virus NS gene. These in vitro synthetized proteins bound to double-stranded RNA and catalyzed the synthesis of 2'-5' oligoadenylates. A nested set of deletion mutants of the 9-2 clone was produced by restriction digestion and polymerase chain reaction. Functional testing of the corresponding truncated proteins revealed that a region between amino acid residues 104 and 158 was necessary for binding to double-stranded RNA and a region between residues 320 and 344 was necessary for enzyme activity. Moreover substitution of the lysine residue at position 333 by arginine did not affect the enzyme activity.