Adenovirus DNA polymerase is phosphorylated by a stably associated histone H1 kinase

Adenovirus DNA polymerase (AdPol) exists as a complex with the preterminal protein (pTP) and is essential for both initiation and elongation stages of viral DNA replication. Recent evidence from our laboratory indicates that AdPol is a phosphoprotein and that the major in vivo phosphorylation site, serine 67, occurs within the consensus substrate recognition sequence for cdc2 kinases. In this study, we found that a protein kinase which also exhibits histone H1 phosphorylation activity is stably associated with AdPol. AdPol forms a multimeric complex with this histone H1 kinase and pTP in HeLa cells infected with adenovirus or coinfected with recombinant vaccinia viruses encoding AdPol and pTP. The associated protein kinase and the p34cdc2 kinase phosphorylate AdPol at the same sites which are utilized in vivo, suggesting that the p34cdc2 kinase or a related kinase may be involved in the in vivo phosphorylation of AdPol. Serine 67 is also one of the major in vitro phosphorylation sites, and the substitution of alanine for serine at this position abolishes DNA replication initiation activity of AdPol.