Head-to-Tail Intramolecular Interaction of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Regulatory Protein ICP27 Is Important for Its Interaction with Cellular mRNA Export Receptor TAP/NXF1

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) protein ICP27 has many important functions during infection that are achieved through interactions with a number of cellular proteins. In its role as a viral RNA export protein, ICP27 interacts with TAP/NXF1, the cellular mRNA export receptor, and both the N and C termini of ICP27 must be intact for this interaction to take place. Here we show by bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) that ICP27 interacts directly with TAP/NXF1 during infection, and this interaction failed to occur with an ICP27 mutant bearing substitutions of serines for cysteines at positions 483 and 488 in the C-terminal zinc finger. Recently, we showed that ICP27 undergoes a head-to-tail intramolecular interaction, which could make the N- and C-terminal regions accessible for binding to TAP/NXF1. To determine the importance of intramolecular association of ICP27 to its interaction with TAP/NXF1, we performed BiFC-based fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) by acceptor photobleaching. BiFC-based FRET showed that the interaction between ICP27 and TAP/NXF1 occurred in living cells upon head-to-tail intramolecular association of ICP27, further establishing that TAP/NXF1 interacts with both the N and C termini of ICP27. IMPORTANCE ICP27 is a key regulatory protein during herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) infection. ICP27 interacts with a number of cellular proteins, and an important question asks how these interactions are regulated during infection. We showed previously that ICP27 undergoes a head-to-tail intramolecular interaction, and here we show that the cellular mRNA export receptor protein TAP/NXF1 interacts with ICP27 after its head-to-tail association. Several proteins that interact with ICP27 require that the N and C termini of ICP27 be intact. These results demonstrate that the head-to-tail interaction of ICP27 may regulate some of its protein interactions perhaps through alternating between open and closed configurations.