To better characterize the enzymatic activities required for human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA replication, the E1 helicases of HPV types 6 and 11 were produced using a baculovirus expression system. The purified wild type proteins and a version of HPV11 E1 lacking the N-terminal 71 amino acids, which was better expressed, were found to be hexameric over a wide range of concentrations and to have helicase and ATPase activities with relatively low values for K m (ATP) of 12 M for HPV6 E1 and 6 M for HPV11 E1. Interestingly, the value of K m (ATP) was increased 7-fold in the presence of the E2 transactivation domain. In turn, ATP was found to perturb the co-operative binding of E1 and E2 to DNA. Mutant and truncated versions of in vitro translated E1 were used to identify a minimal ATPase domain composed of the C-terminal 297 amino acids. This fragment was expressed, purified, and found to be fully active in ATP hydrolysis, single-stranded DNA binding, and unwinding assays, despite lacking the minimal origin-binding domain.The papillomaviruses (PVs) 1 are small, nonenveloped DNA viruses that infect and replicate in the cutaneous or mucosal epithelia of humans and other mammals. There are over 100 types of human papillomavirus (HPV), which cause conditions ranging from plantar warts (HPV1) and genital warts (HPV6 and -11) to cervical cancer (HPV16, -18, and -31). HPV6 and -11 are also responsible for laryngeal papillomatosis, a rare but very serious infection of the respiratory tract (1). Antiviral agents capable of specifically inhibiting PV replication could play an important role in the treatment of these diseases, but none exist at this time.Despite their host and tissue specificity, all of the PV types share a common genomic organization. The closed, circular genome of ϳ8000 base pairs codes for only 10 proteins: eight early proteins termed E1-E8 and two late proteins, L1 and L2, that make up the viral coat (2). E1 and E2 are the only viral proteins required for HPV DNA replication (3, 4). E2 is a sequence-specific DNA-binding protein that serves to regulate both transcription and DNA replication. E1, a DNA helicase, is the only PV protein that possesses enzymatic activity (5) and is also the most highly conserved of the PV proteins. For these reasons, E1 has been considered as the most attractive molecular target for the development of antiviral agents (6).During the initiation of PV DNA replication, E2 serves as a specificity factor to enhance binding of E1 monomers to the origin, which by themselves bind to double-stranded DNA with little sequence specificity (4, 7-11). E2 dimers bind with high specificity to DNA sequences within the origin and recruit to it E1 monomers, through direct protein-protein interactions (12, 13). Upon binding to DNA, E1 monomers assemble into hexamers (14, 15), but the E1-E2 interaction is not maintained (16,17). Thus, the role of E2 is to catalyze the assembly of hexameric E1 complexes specifically at the origin. ATP hydrolysis is also required for E1 hexamers to distort the orig...