HIV-1 Nucleocapsid Protein Binds to the Viral DNA Initiation Sequences and Chaperones their Kissing Interactions

The chaperone properties of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) nucleocapsid protein (NC) are required for the two obligatory strand transfer reactions occurring during viral DNA synthesis. The second strand transfer relies on the destabilization and the subsequent annealing of the primer binding site sequences (PBS) at the 3′ end of the (−) and (+) DNA strands. To characterize the binding and chaperone properties of NC on the (−)PBS...