Engineered Hyperactive Integrase for Concerted HIV-1 DNA Integration

The DNA cutting and joining reactions of HIV-1 integration are catalyzed by integrase (IN), a viral protein that functions as a tetramer bridging the two viral DNA ends (intasome). Two major obstacles for biochemical and structural studies of HIV-1 intasomes are 1) the low efficiency of assembly with oligonucleotide DNA substrates, and 2) the non-specific aggregation of both intasomes and free IN in the reaction mixture. By fusing IN with a...