Poliovirus protein 2C has ATPase and GTPase activities

Poliovirus protein 2C belongs to an expanding group of proteins containing a nucleotide binding motif in their sequence. We present evidence that poliovirus 2C has nucleoside triphosphatase (NTPase) activity and binds to RNA. Poliovirus 2C was expressed in Escherichia coli cells as a fusion protein with the maltose binding protein (MBP). The fusion protein MBP-2C is efficiently cut by protease Xa within the 2C region. Thus, the fusion protein as such was used to assay for the putative activities of poliovirus 2C. Deletion mutants were constructed which lacked different portions of the 2C carboxyl terminus: mutant 2C delta 1 lacked the last 169 amino acids, whereas mutant 2C delta 2 had the last 74 amino acids deleted. The fusion proteins MBP-2C, MBP-2BC, and the mutant MBP-2C delta 2 that contained the first 255 amino acids of 2C had NTPase activity. Both ATPase and GTPase activities are inhibited by antibodies directed against the MBP-2C protein. Analysis of the ability of the different proteins to bind to labeled RNA indicates that MBP-2C and MBP-2BC form a complex, whereas none of the mutants interacted with RNA, indicating that the RNA binding domain lies beyond amino acid 255. None of the fusion proteins had detectable helicase activity. We suggest that poliovirus protein 2C shows similarities to the GTPases group involved in vesicular traffic and transports the viral RNA replication complexes. These results provide the first experimental evidence that poliovirus protein 2C is an NTPase and that this protein has affinity for nucleic acids.