Human adenovirus type 5 infection causes the disruption of structures in the cell nucleus termed promyelocytic leukaemia (PML) protein nuclear domains or ND10, which contain the PML protein as a critical component. This disruption is achieved through the action of the viral E4 Orf3 protein, which forms track-like nuclear structures that associate with the PML protein. This association is mediated by a direct interaction of Orf3 with a specific PML isoform, PMLII. We show here that the Orf3 interaction properties of PMLII are conferred by a 40 aa residue segment of the unique C-terminal domain of the protein. This segment was sufficient to confer interaction on a heterologous protein. The analysis was informed by prior application of a bioinformatic tool for the prediction of potential protein interaction sites within unstructured protein sequences (predictors of naturally disordered region analysis; PONDR). This tool predicted three potential molecular recognition elements (MoRE) within the C-terminal domain of PMLII, one of which was found to form the core of the Orf3 interaction site, thus demonstrating the utility of this approach. The sequence of the mapped Orf3-binding site on PML protein was found to be relatively poorly conserved across other species; however, the overall organization of MoREs within unstructured sequence was retained, suggesting the potential for conservation of functional interactions.
INTRODUCTIONHuman adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) is one of a diverse collection of viruses that interact during infection with nuclear structures termed ND10 or promyelocytic leukaemia (PML) protein nuclear domains (PML-NDs reviewed by Everett & Chelbi-Alix, 2007;. These structures are complex multiprotein assemblies within which PML is a key component, essential for the localization of other proteins to PML-NDs. PML-NDs have been implicated in a variety of important cell processes, including DNA damage and stress responses, senescence, apoptosis and innate immunity (Bernardi & Pandolfi, 2007).The targeting of PML-NDs by viruses has been linked to avoidance of innate immune responses. The incoming genomes of several nucleus-replicating DNA viruses localize adjacent to PML-NDs (Ishov & Maul, 1996). For herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), this has been shown to involve the mobilization of existing PML-ND components to the sites of virus ingress (Everett & Murray, 2005). Both HSV1 and human cytomegalovirus infections induce the gross disruption of PML-NDs and, for HSV1, degradation of the PML protein (Everett & Maul, 1994;Kelly et al., 1995). Ad5 infection disrupts PML-NDs by deforming them into a large number of elongated tracks (Carvalho et al., 1995; Doucas et al., 1996). For both HSV1 and Ad5, mutations that prevent expression of the virus-coded PML-ND disruption function leave the viruses highly sensitive to innate and intrinsic antiviral responses (Everett et al., 2006(Everett et al., , 2008Ullman & Hearing, 2008;Ullman et al., 2007). Thus it has been proposed that PML-NDs or their components play a key role ...